Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is testing a UI change in the latest version of the Google Messages app.
- Videos sent via RCS have a delete shortcut instead of a forward icon.
- This would make for a much quicker way to delete videos.
Google Messages is the go-to texting app on Android phones, and it supports the RCS standard for a more modern messaging experience. Now, it looks like the company is testing an interesting change to videos received via RCS.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
We conducted a teardown of the latest Google Messages beta for Android (version messages.android_20250507_02_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic) and discovered that Google is testing a quick way to delete videos received via RCS chats. We enabled the change, too, as seen below.
Google is specifically replacing the forward shortcut for videos with a delete shortcut. We’re not 100% sure why Google is doing this. For one, the company still offers a forward icon for images sent via RCS. However, we’re guessing this would be useful if you’ve got plenty of received videos clogging up your device storage. So the ability to quickly delete these clips would be a great way to claw back storage compared to deleting photos.
In any event, this would be a more convenient way to delete videos than the current method. Right now, you have to press and hold the desired video and then tap the delete icon at the top of the screen.
