Messaging app on your Galaxy phone gets more expressive design

Google has started rolling out a more expressive design to the Google Messages app. Since it is the default messaging app on millions of Galaxy phones and tablets, you could start seeing the new design the next time you open the Messages app on your Samsung phone.

Google unveiled its new UI design language, Material 3 Expressive, during the Google I/O 2025 event in May. And it started appearing in some Google apps a few weeks ago. Now, it has reached Google Messages for more users worldwide. The new design puts most elements inside containers.

As you can see in the screenshots below, all the chat threads on the home screen of the Google Messages app are inside a container with rounded corners. You can see how the home screen looks in Dark and Light modes.

Inside the chat thread, too, the messages are placed inside a container, while the top bar has shortcuts for audio and video calling. When you open the emoji picker, you can see Material 3 Expressive design language for the tab bar in which the active tab has a pill shape, while the other tabs have a rectangular shape.

The search bar to search emojis is now placed below the tab bar rather than below the message compose text field, and this makes the user experience less confusing.

The Plus menu which you need to use to add attachments to an RCS message now has monochrome icons placed inside pill-shaped containers that are arranged in a grid format. In the second screenshot above, you can see icons for Gallery, GIFs, Stickers, Files, Location, Contacts, Schedule Send, and Selfie GIF. The grid also takes up more space inside the container as opposed to earlier.

Google has also started rolling out updates to Google Clock, Google Contacts, Google Phone, Gmail, and Google Translate apps for Android phones and tablets.