Google Messages now lets you view larger contact photos

Abner Li | Jun 24 2024 - 4:30 am PT

A nice quality-of-life improvement for Google Messages lets you tap on contact photos in the conversation view.

When in the main list, you can tap on a contact’s profile photo to expand it. This is much bigger than the version that appears in Google Messages’ Details view. In fact, it’s about the size of the avatar in Google Contacts — which unfortunately dropped the edge-to-edge version last year — without having to open that app, and goes hand-in-hand with Profiles.

This is joined by shortcuts at the bottom that let you:

Message: A bit repetitive and just opens the conversation
Call: Immediately dials
Info: Opens the contact Details page for a direct shortcut without having to first open the conversation and then tapping the app bar or overflow menu

This also works with group conversations, though there’s no Call action in that case. Long-press anywhere outside the circle to get the Pin, Archive, Delete, Block, and Mark as read/unread actions.

This ability to tap and expand contact photos has been in Google Messages beta testing since the start of June and it’s now seeing a wider server-side rollout. However, it has not yet fully launched.