Custom Contacts Comes Back to Google Messages

Google announced to its users that its Messages app will once again be able to add names and images for their contacts after the service transitioned to a social media profile-style system in 2024.

Google is changing the “profile sharing” feature in its Google Messages app to allow users to customize contact names and photographs on their own devices for stored contacts and those to whom they send text messages. According to 9to5Google, a change was implemented late last year that overrode your personalized names and images with each individual’s broadcasted profile, but you can now reverse it to give friends, co-workers, and family members the names and avatars that you believe they should have. The profile sharing (formerly known as profile discovery) was made available to Messages users in March 2024, replacing the names and contact photos associated with a user’s contacts with information from their Google accounts.

The profile-sharing functionality was unveiled in late 2023, as Google continued to push the RCS rollout, and it functions similarly to Contact Posters on iPhones. In October, Android Authority discovered a reference in Android code indicating that Google was once again preparing to allow for customer profile photos.

Google’s support page was updated for profile sharing and now explains how to set a local contact photo to replace the one shared by your contact. To change their name or appearance, tap on a contact’s name or an image of a person in a Google Messages chat, then select their photo from the information page. From there, you can select either their shared one or your own unique one for them.

With that, Google added the “customise how you are seen” tab to Messages, an unavoidable step that leaned even more strongly on a social platform type of self-presentation.

Though the decision to make profile sharing the only means to establish names and contact photographs has been reversed, users can still appear to use their contacts’ preferred information; there is no evidence that profile sharing has been completely abandoned.

Personalising a contact’s information is, as one might imagine, pretty simple: merely press a contact’s name or photo within the conversation to access a page displaying the user’s information, which can then be manually edited.

The addition of profile sharing was first revealed in November 2023, and it might be seen as part of Google’s aim to deliver a functionally equivalent competitor to Apple’s iMessage.

As earlier reported on techradar, Apple‘s embrace of RCS (Rich Communication Services), a standard that allows for seamless media sharing and group chats comparable to its own iMessage standard, is helping to close the gap between the two platforms.

Before now Google has encouraged RCS as a forward-thinking and collaborative standard, even publicly celebrating Apple’s choice to include RCS on the iPhone.

Furthermore, by the end of 2024, Google’s main messaging app has included a slew of new messaging tools aimed at protecting users from scammers and spammers, including warnings about unsafe links, blur filters for unpleasant photos, and improved contact verification.

It’s apparent that Google wants Messages to be the go-to texting app for Android users, and allowing individuals to use mugshots of their friends and family as profile photographs appears to be part of that.