Paul Morris on November 21, 2021, 2:29 am

Android Could Soon Show iMessage Reactions As Emoji Characters

Users of the Android Messages app may start seeing iMessage reactions in a more sensical way on their devices in the near future.

If the code of the latest Google Messages app has been interpreted correctly, changes are coming to better handle reactions from Apple’s Messages apps on iOS and macOS.

iOS and macOS users can currently send and receive messages via Apple’s iMessage platform. Those that are sent from iMessage to iMessage will show up in blue and those that are sent from iMessage/Apple to an Android device will show up in green. Regardless of the delivery route, iOS and macOS users have the ability to “react” to the message with a selection of different reactions.

On Apple devices, those reactions are handled natively and are shown as visual annotations against the message that the user has reacted to. On Android devices, however, those reactions can be handled terribly and can often confuse Android owners. especially when they aren’t aware of the reaction system that exists within the iMessage ecosystem. Now, according to code investigation from 9To5Google, an impending change could translate those iMessage reactions to emoji on Android devices.

The latest Google Messages code has an annotation that reads “show iPhone reactions as emoji” alongside the “ios_notification_classification” code. At the moment, little is known how Google intends to actually handle the iMessage reactions, and, perhaps more importantly, how the company intends to link an iMessage reaction to a particular message on the Android device.

If this change was to happen, it would definitely remove some of the problems that Android users have when messaging those using Apple’s iMessage platform. There are clearly still tweaks to be made and some issues to resolve around the UI and UX of the new feature but it’s likely to be a feature that will be welcomed with open arms by Android device owners.