Newsletter 
Summary: The Google Messages app will soon become more colorful, and you’ll like the reason. Based on color, you’ll be able to see who uses RCS when you create new conversations. The contacts with RCS will be colored, while the others will not. This change was spotted in the beta app, and it’s coming to the stable channel.
Google is planning to make Google Messages more colorful, and chances are you’ll like the reason behind it. Based on what Android Authority found in an APK teardown, Google will start to use color in order to differentiate RCS, SMS, and MMS users for new chats.
Google Messages will become more colorful soon, and you’ll like the reason
Some of you may wonder why is this necessary, as there are quite a few visual cues available in the Google Messages conversation list. That is true, but you won’t find any before you create a new conversation. This will change that.
So, at some point in the near future, anyone using RCS chats, on either Android or iOS, will have their name colored in Material You pastels. This change was spotted in a recent beta version of the Google Messages app.
On top of that, contacts will also get a small RCS badge to the right of their contact names. This will all be visible after you tap the ‘Start chat’ button in Google Messages. For SMS/MMS users, nothing will be shown, so it’ll be easy to differentiate.
The ‘New conversation’ tab will change the color of contact names for RCS users
The ‘New conversation’ tab will change the color of contact names that are using RCS. The color will change from black to Material You pastels. They’ll be much easier to spot if you’re using light mode, though. You can see the difference below.
Some of you may wonder what happens if a specific contact has two numbers. Well, you’ll be able to individually see if one of those numbers support RCS or not.
We don’t know when exactly will Google push this to the stable channel, but chances are it will happen soon, as it’s already a part of the beta app.