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Google Messages is getting a new gallery picker UI
- Google appears to be working on a new gallery picker for the Messages app.
- The latest beta adds a camera icon that opens up access to your gallery when starting a new message to a group.
- After picking an image, you can then select the recipients.
Google has been working on quite a few new features for the Messages app as of late. A few weeks ago, it was discovered Google could let users turn off expressive animations. More recently, however, we spotted a redesigned Selfie GIF feature. Now we have found that Google could make a change to the UI to introduce a new gallery picker for group messages.
In the latest beta for Google Messages (messages.android_20240506_01_RC00.phone_samsung_openbeta_dynamic), we have uncovered a change to the app’s UI. When you tap the new camera icon on the main page (which the stable channel of Messages doesn’t have yet), it takes the user directly to their photo gallery before starting a new group message.
You can view how the feature works in the video below.
So, instead of creating a group and then tapping on the camera icon to open up the gallery, this new shortcut reverses that order. Such a function would help to streamline the process if you just want to quickly share an image with a few people.
As this is an APK teardown, it’s unknown when or if Google will roll out this feature.