Google Messages web app now supports direct reply

Google Messages on the web rarely gets updated, but a recent addition lets you directly reply to RCS chats like on Android.

The last update to Messages for web was support for the updated RCS read receipts/send status.

Previously, hovering over an RCS chat in messages.google.com/web would let you Copy text and Delete, as well as react with emoji (though you only have seven options instead of the entire picker on Android).

Google recently introduced the ability to directly reply to RCS messages on the desktop web client (PWA). When you do so, the chat is shown above the text field with a “Reply to message” hint for an experience similar to the Android app, which gained this feature in October 2022.

This has been a highly-requested capability since the Messages web app has long supported showing these quote replies made on/from phones.

These direct replies do not appear to be available on Android tablets, which moved the rectangular “Start chat” FAB from the top of the conversation list to the bottom-right corner of that column. We have our fair share of complaints about the QR code-based client, especially for the Pixel Tablet, but the lack of direct replies is curious given the usual level of feature parity with messages.google.com.

On a similar note, we recently noticed that Messages for Wear OS has been updated with a new design for suggested replies that makes use of thin outlines for the pill-shaped container rather than filled buttons. This could be in preparation for design language tweaks that might coincide with Wear OS 4.