Google Messages ‘Reply’ option missing from notifications for some

Abner Li | Jan 22 2024 - 9:10 pm PT

Some Google Messages users are seeing an odd bug where notifications are missing the inline “Reply” action on Android.

Those impacted with this issue only have the ability to “Mark as read.” “Reply” and “Remind 1 hr” are missing. As such, they have to tap the notification (and open Messages) to send replies. This can be quite inconvenient in circumstances where you don’t want to exit what you’re doing, like when watching fullscreen video.

This is not a widespread issue with Mark as read, Reply, and Remind 1 hr available for the vast majority of users.

The problem appears to have emerged in the past week with a handful of reports from Pixel owners. Compared to recent feature deprecations (reminders and Google Photos video upload) that still have not been acknowledged by the company, this is most likely a bug as inline message reply from notifications is too basic a capability to remove.

If you’re on the Messages stable, you could try joining the beta version to see if that brings the reply button back.