Google Messages celebrated a significant milestone last year, announcing that the service hasa billion active RCS users. To commemorate the occasion, the Messages team also offered a preview of some new features coming to Google’s messaging app. A few of these have already made their way to Messages in some parts of the world, including voice moods, AI-powered Photomoji, reaction effects, animated emoji, etc. However, Screen Effects, also revealed in the November 2023 preview, weren’t activated. It looks like Google is now slowly but surely making this available to Messages users.
Screen effects are triggered when there are specific keywords in your message, with examples includingIt’s snowing,I love you, and more. During the launch, Google said there were more than 15 such effects available, encouraging users to find them all during the course of their conversations.
The Screen Effect for the phrase “love you” previewed by Google in November
The folks at9to5Googlehave discovered two other phrases that trigger the onscreen effect —sounds goodandHappy Valentine’s Day. The former unleashes an array of thumbs-up icons from either side of the screen, with the Valentine’s Day text revealing a series of hearts and a dove across the screen, which is also the screen effect for “love you”. The site notes that the phraseit’s snowingdoesn’t return an effect just yet.
The Screen Effect for “sounds good” (via 9to5Google)
Unfortunately, this rollout of Screen Effects in Messages appears to be quite limited right now, as I couldn’t get it to work on the app. It’s likely that this is a geography-based restriction, though our US-based news editor couldn’t get it to work either. In any case, it’s good to know that this feature has finally started to make it to at least some devices, with a wider rollout probably occurring in the days and weeks ahead.
Google is no stranger to some of these quirky onscreen effects. Back whenGoogle Hangoutsused to be a thing, the company rolled out a bunch ofanimated emoji Easter eggsfor phrases like happy birthday, lmao, rofl, and several others.
Apart from screen effects, some other features previewed in November haven’t become widely available yet. For instance, Profiles aren’t live as of right now. This is designed to help other peopleidentify you more easily, especially in group chats where participants may not have your contact information. Similarly,custom bubblesare absent, too, which lets users change the background color of each conversation from the three-dot overflow menu.
