iMessage responses are now emoji on Android, but there’s still work to be done

Google is making iOS’s iMessage more compatible with its Android’s Messages app. From now on, emoji responses in iMessage can also be seen in Messages, while previously they only appeared as text in the conversation. The feature is currently being tested in the messaging beta.

Emoji Reactions iMessage

Google has been complaining for some time that the iMessage messaging app on iOS has limited compatibility with its own Messages app. Messages you send from an Android phone to an iOS device appear as a simple text message. When iPhone users respond to messages with emoji, those emoji responses appear as single text messages in the conversation. That looks far from ideal.

Google is now changing that, as it is testing a system where such emoji text messages will automatically appear as a real emoji response. Droid-Life knows that. The feature was previously discovered in Google Messages code, but now Google is rolling it out to beta users of the Messages app.

Own interpretation

The striking thing about the function is that Google has its own interpretation of the responses in iMessage. The comments are not translated verbatim, so for example the response with the question mark from iMessage is placed as an emoji with a thinking face. Below is a table with Google’s interpretation.

Work in progress

While the feature is currently part of the Google Messages beta, it didn’t work when we tested it in the editors. Emoji responses still appeared as long text messages in a conversation, as you can see in the screenshots below.

Left: The responses in Messages. Right: the comments in iMessage

Yet we already see a new setting in the Messages app that has to do with converting the comments. You will find them in Messaging via Settings > Advanced > Show iPhone comments as emoji. The function is on by default, even if it doesn’t work for everyone in practice yet.

It is likely that the feature will work properly in the coming days and weeks before it is rolled out in the stable version of Google Messages. We are very curious if you are already seeing emoji reactions from iPhone users. Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.

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