Google has quietly rolled out one of the most requested features in its default Android messaging app: the ability to @mention specific people in group conversations. It sounds minor. It isn’t.
The feature, which began appearing for users in recent days, allows anyone in a Rich Communication Services (RCS) group chat to type the “@” symbol followed by a contact’s name, triggering a direct notification to that person even if they’ve muted the conversation. As Android Central reported, this is Google’s answer to a problem that has plagued group chats since their inception: the person who never pays attention.
The mechanics are straightforward. When you type “@” in a Google Messages group chat, a list of participants appears. Select a name, and that person receives a notification that specifically flags them, distinct from the usual stream of group messages. It mirrors functionality that users of WhatsApp, Telegram, and Apple’s iMessage have enjoyed for some time. For the billions of Android devices worldwide that ship with Google Messages as the default texting app, this is overdue infrastructure.
But the @mentions rollout is just one piece of a much larger and more aggressive push by Google to make its Messages app competitive — not just with other messaging platforms, but with Apple’s iMessage itself.
Google’s Broader RCS Campaign: More Than Just Mentions
To understand why @mentions matter, you have to understand what Google is trying to build. RCS, the protocol that underpins Google Messages’ advanced features, has been Google’s primary weapon in its long-running campaign to modernize text messaging on Android. Unlike the ancient SMS and MMS standards, RCS supports read receipts, typing indicators, high-resolution media sharing, end-to-end encryption, and now @mentions in group chats.
Google has spent years pressuring Apple to adopt RCS, a campaign that included a dedicated website and the hashtag #GetTheMessage. Apple finally relented — partially. With iOS 18, released in late 2024, Apple added basic RCS support to iMessage, meaning texts between iPhones and Android phones now support higher-quality images and other improvements. But Apple deliberately withheld end-to-end encryption for cross-platform RCS messages and kept the green bubble distinction intact. The war isn’t over. It’s just entered a new phase.
The @mentions feature lands at a moment when Google is layering capability after capability onto Messages. Recent months have seen the company integrate Gemini AI directly into the app, allowing users to summon Google’s large language model inside conversations. According to reporting from Google’s own blog, the company has also added the ability to create custom “Photomoji” stickers from images, screen-sharing during video calls, and ultra-high-resolution image sharing that preserves original quality.
And there’s the satellite connectivity angle. Google Messages now supports RCS messaging via satellite on compatible devices — a feature that, until recently, was an Apple exclusive with its Emergency SOS via satellite on iPhones. Google’s implementation, available on the Pixel 9 series and select devices running Android 15, goes further by enabling two-way texting over satellite rather than just emergency alerts.
Each of these features, taken individually, seems incremental. Taken together, they represent a systematic effort to eliminate every reason an Android user might prefer a third-party messaging app — or envy an iPhone owner’s iMessage.
The @mentions addition specifically targets a pain point in group chats that has driven users toward apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. Group RCS chats on Google Messages have historically been noisy and hard to manage. Without the ability to tag someone directly, important messages get buried. People miss plans. Payments go uncollected. The friend who owes you for dinner continues to live in blissful ignorance.
Now that excuse is gone.
The feature is rolling out server-side, which means it doesn’t require a specific app update to activate. Google is enabling it gradually across its user base, a standard practice for the company that can nonetheless frustrate users who don’t see it immediately. As Android Central noted, the rollout appears tied to the latest versions of Google Messages, and users should ensure their app is up to date.
There’s an important nuance here. The @mentions feature works only in RCS group chats — not in SMS or MMS groups. This means all participants in the conversation need to be using RCS-compatible messaging apps. For Android-to-Android conversations through Google Messages, this is typically automatic. But mixed groups that include iPhone users will depend on whether Apple’s RCS implementation supports the mention protocol. Early indications suggest it does not, at least not yet.
This creates a familiar dynamic. Google builds the feature. Apple decides whether to play along. And users caught in the middle just want to tag their roommate about the electric bill.
The competitive context extends beyond Apple. Meta’s WhatsApp, which dominates messaging in most of the world outside the United States, has offered @mentions in group chats for years. So has Telegram. Signal, the privacy-focused app, added the feature in 2020. Google Messages arriving this late to the party underscores how much ground the app has had to cover just to reach feature parity with competitors that don’t have the advantage of being preinstalled on most of the world’s smartphones.
That preinstallation advantage is significant, though. Google Messages comes loaded on virtually every non-Samsung Android device sold globally, and even Samsung — which long pushed its own Samsung Messages app — has increasingly defaulted to Google Messages on its Galaxy devices. This gives Google an enormous distribution channel. Every feature it adds reaches a potential audience of over a billion users without requiring them to download anything new.
So when Google adds @mentions, it isn’t just matching WhatsApp. It’s bringing that functionality to people who would never voluntarily install another messaging app. The casual user. The person who just texts. That’s a massive population, and it’s the one Google is most aggressively courting.
The timing also coincides with Google’s push to make Gemini a central part of the Android experience. The AI assistant now lives inside Google Messages, capable of answering questions, drafting responses, and generating content without leaving the conversation. Google clearly envisions Messages not just as a communication tool but as a hub — a place where AI, messaging, payments, and media sharing converge.
Whether users want that convergence is another question. History is littered with messaging apps that tried to become everything platforms: Facebook Messenger’s ill-fated chatbot era, WeChat’s super-app model that never quite translated outside China, Google’s own graveyard of abandoned communication products (Allo, Hangouts, Google Talk, Google Wave). The company’s track record with messaging is, to put it charitably, inconsistent.
But Google Messages has one thing those predecessors lacked: staying power through default status. You can’t kill an app that comes preloaded on every phone. You can only make it better or worse. And with @mentions, better group chat management, AI integration, and satellite connectivity, Google is clearly choosing better.
For now, the @mentions feature is a welcome and practical addition. It solves a real problem — the chaos of group chats where critical messages vanish into a scroll of memes and half-read responses. It won’t make your friend pay you back for dinner. But at least now they can’t claim they didn’t see the message.
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