Google Messages starts displaying Apple iMessage reactions as emojis

Google Messages is starting to translate Apple’s iMessage reactions into emoji. This should make a lot of conversations easier.

After a while, you will stop seeing those strange texts that come after a message forwarded to someone close to you using your iPhone. Google has just started rolling out a new feature to its Messages app that translates Tapbacks from iMessage to emoji. It was 9to5Google who discovered that this still experimental feature was hidden in the beta version of the Google Messages app last year. It’s hard to say when it will be available in the public version, but if you’re on the beta, you’ll be able to enjoy it soon.

Google Messages Starts Translating Apple iMessage Reactions to Emoticons

For those who don’t know, when an iPhone user reacts to a message sent from an Android device, the recipient only gets a textual interpretation of that reaction. For example, “thumbs up”in response to a message asking “see you in 10 minutes?”will be translated as “loved it, see you in 10 minutes?”. This can make the conversation as a whole quite difficult to understand.

This should make a lot of conversations easier.

With this new update, the Android user will now receive emoji instead of these pure text translations. That being said, as 9to5Google explains, this won’t be an exact translation of the original reaction. So the “heart”reaction will result in the “face with open mouth”emoji. When you click on the corresponding emoji, a note will appear explaining that it was “transferred from iPhone”along with the name of the sender.

Note that this feature is enabled by default, but users can of course turn it off if they wish by going to Message Settings and then Advanced. There, just turn off the option “Show iPhone reactions as emoji”.