Google Messages Just Fixed Some Major Problems With Retrieving Photos and Videos
If you’ve encountered problems with Google Messages, especially with sending photos and videos, you’re not alone. Messages users have complained that images are slow to load when sent via RCS. Media files appear blurry for several minutes before users can open them. Photos and videos also arrive in compressed form, which is what you’d expect via SMS rather than RCS.
Luckily for those affected, Google took notice. On Tuesday on the company’s support website, a community manager acknowledged “annoying issues” with sending media in Google Messages and shared good news: The Google team is “actively working on this” and has released updates addressing “significant improvements in media ingestion performance.”
There doesn’t appear to be a new update that can be installed to address user concerns, which likely indicates that these changes are happening behind the scenes on Google’s part. However, it doesn’t hurt to keep Google Messages updated. Go to the Play Store page and make sure you are using the latest version of the app. If not, click Update . Hopefully, after all these changes, you will be free of your media problems forever.
Despite the company’s optimism about the update, the report suggests the challenges here could be complex. It doesn’t help that Google avoids identifying the specific features they’re considering, simply labeling them as media slowdowns and glitches. As such, Google encourages users to continue reporting any issues they encounter. Whether this means Google is aware that these specific issues may still be present when sending and receiving media in Google Messages is unclear, but it’s good context moving forward.
How to Report Google Messages Bugs to Google
If you are still experiencing media issues or any issues with Google Messages after today, you should report them to Google. To do this, open the app, tap your profile icon in the top right corner, then select Help & Feedback . Click Submit Feedback at the bottom of this page, then choose whether you want Google Play Services to access your device’s logs. (If you don’t want to do this, that’s fine.) From here, you can write your review and, if you like, include screenshots or system logs before emailing your review.