Chat themes in Messages now work for standard texts, no RCS needed

Chat themes in Google Messages are now available for standard text messages, meaning you can set wallpapers and favorite colors even on plain SMS and MMS. That matters because until now, visual customization was locked to RCS chats, leaving millions of users with boring gray threads. If your carrier or contact doesn't support RCS, you still get to make the conversation look decent.

Context: RCS was the favorite child, SMS the poor cousin

Google has spent years pushing RCS as the modern replacement for SMS: encrypted chats, typing indicators, high-quality photos. But real adoption depends on the carrier, the manufacturer, and the contact, so plain SMS remains the common denominator. Until now, chat themes only worked in RCS conversations, which created a second-class experience for anyone still on standard text.

Details: what exactly you can customize

The update lets you apply custom wallpapers and favorite colors to SMS and MMS threads in Google Messages. There's no country or carrier exclusion list: if the app is updated, themes show up in standard chats too. The feature coexists with existing RCS themes, so visual settings stay consistent across your inbox. It's a quiet rollout, with no official announcement, typical of Google when testing something at global scale.

Analysis: who wins and who loses

The user who doesn't want their messaging app to look like 2012 wins, and Google wins by reducing friction between RCS and SMS: fewer excuses not to use Messages. Carriers that sold RCS as a premium feature lose some ground, because personalization is no longer a differentiator. My take: Google knows RCS won't win by decree, so it's making the app attractive on its own, regardless of protocol.

Implications: the message is the app, not the protocol

This move suggests Google will keep investing in user experience inside Messages even as RCS adoption crawls. It also pressures Apple, which already adopted RCS in iOS 18, to match the personalization level in its Messages app. Short term, expect more style features and less dependence on carriers flipping any switches.

In the end, the question isn't whether SMS needs themes, but why it took so long to get them. The answer says a lot about how features get prioritized on Android.

Source: Android Authority