Google Messages begins displaying iMessage reactions as emoji
Pretty soon, you’ll no longer have to see those weird reaction texts from your iPhone-using friends. Google has started rolling out a feature for Messages that translates iMessaging “Tapbacks” as emojis, according to 9to5Google. The publication first discovered the experimental feature in a deep dive of the Google Messages beta app last year. It’s unclear where it’ll come out for the stable version, but If you’re using the beta app, you’ll get the update that enables it soon enough.
When iPhone users react to messages sent from an Android device, the recipient gets text interpretations of that reaction. A “thumbs up” to a text that says “see you in ten?” will be translated to “liked ‘see you in ten?'”, for instance. It can make the chat thread a bit cluttered and confusing.
With this new update, the Android user receives emojis instead, though as 9to5Google notes, they’re not exact translations of the actual reactions. A “heart” reacts yields the “face with the heart eyes,” for instance, while the exclamation mark reaction sends the recipient the “face with the open mouth” emoji. When you tap on the emoji, a note pops up explaining that it was “Translated from iPhone,” along with the sender’s name.
The feature is enabled by default, but users can toggle it off if they want by going to Advanced under the Messages’ Settings and switching off “Show iPhone reactions as emoji.”
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