I love Google Messages, but I still miss these 5 iMessage features

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Google Messages has come a long way in the past couple of years. RCS is finally the default messaging protocol on most Android flagships , and small quality-of-life features like read receipts and typing indicators behave the way you’d expect.

The app finally feels like a worthy rival to iMessage, and texting between Android and iPhone no longer feels like the downgrade it once did. Samsung, in fact, believes Google Messages has gotten so good that it has even stopped preloading its own Messages app on Galaxy devices in favor of Google’s.

But spend enough time switching between the two, especially if you’re testing devices across both ecosystems, and the gaps start to show. I’ve had the chance to properly test iOS 27 through the recent beta releases, and now, ahead of its official debut in September alongside the new iPhone lineup, I can say with confidence that Google Messages still hasn’t nailed it.

This is one feature Google apparently started rolling out a few months ago, but I still don’t have it on my phone.

Right now, if someone sends me a long message with, say, an address or some other important information, and I only need to copy one part of it, I can’t. Google Messages only lets me copy the entire message.

My current workaround is to copy the whole message, tap the floating “Copied” notification, and then manually select and copy just the part I actually wanted. It works, but it’s far more cumbersome than it needs to be.

With iOS 27, Apple added the ability to select and copy only a portion of a message, and it’s one of those features you don’t realize you need until you start using it.