Following beta testing over the past several weeks, Google Messages has now officially announced the arrival of custom chat themes and backgrounds on Android.
Requiring RCS, the feature is designed to “make every conversation feel uniquely yours by customizing the colors and background wallpapers for individual chats.”
Chat themes allow you to modify the bubble accent color as well as the wallpaper used in a conversation. Google provides a collection of “curated” backgrounds organized into categories such as Animals, Landscapes, and Space. Users can also upload an image of their own.
Once a theme has been selected, the “message bubbles automatically adjust to perfectly complement the new scheme.” However, users can also “manually tweak the color palette anytime” using the carousel at the top.
Chat themes remain “private to you” and are “only visible to you on your device, so you can style your chats without affecting what the recipient sees.” To set:
- Launch Google Messages and choose the conversation you want to customize.
- Tap the recipient or group name in the top bar OR select the More icon (⋮) in the top right corner.
- Select Chat theme.
- Choose your colors & wallpaper:
- Select a color preset from the palette.
- Under Wallpapers, tap Choose a photo to upload an image from your gallery, or explore the available preset categories.
- Once the wallpaper has been selected, tap “Next” -> You’ll be taken to the preview screen. After you’re satisfied with the appearance shown in the preview, tap Apply!
The Chat theme menu also provides an option to “Reset to default.”
As of this morning, the feature does not yet appear to be broadly available across either the beta or stable channels. Once it becomes available, watch for a red dot in the three-dot menu.