As part of the Google Messages 6.7 update, the platform will soon allow you to delete all you OTPs (One Time Passwords) after 24 hours. As reported by XDA Developers this is designed to try and declutter your inbox.
Google has gradually been improving its Messages service over the past few weeks and months. Firstly, the platform has slowly continued to work though rolling out RCS support across various countries worldwide.
Google Messages also began receiving smart compose as Google look to improve the platform as part of a past update. This began back in July, as more and more users got the feature.
This new feature was noticed by XDA Developers as part of an APK teardown. They noticed strings of new code which indicated that Google will add a feature allowing users to delete OTP messages after 24 hours from their receipt.
Google tackling inbox clutter through OTPs
The idea behind this feature is clearly to try and help users declutter their inboxes. For those that do not know, lots of tasks and services these days are tied either to an email account or our phone number. This is normally to authenticate our identity for various tasks.
This means we end up with a lot of OTPs which build up over the weeks and months. These come every time you log into the service on a new device. In some countries, you also get them when you make payments through internet banking as well as credit and debit cards.
As a result, these start clogging your inbox. In turn, making it more difficult to actually find messages you actually want to see.
Google takes a different approach to others on OTPs
Now Google has recognized the issues it has aims to do something about it. This new update will let you automatically delete OTPs after 24 hours of receipt.
Most OTPs are temporary, essentially by nature, most of them only last about 10 minutes. This means getting rid of the messages after 24 hours should not cause a problem for anyone as they are useless by then anyway.
This, therefore, is just another way to streamline and automate something that many of us forget or cannot be bothered to do. The result though should be a far less cluttered inbox for most of us.
Other messaging services have tried to tackle this issue by placing OTPs and other promotional messages in a secondary inbox. However, this approach seems to be a much more effectual way of decluttering the inbox.
It makes finding the message in the first instance much easier but then deletes it when it becomes useless. There is no word when this update will roll out. Therefore we will have to wait for this new feature for a while at least.