I've been using the new Google Messages UI; one change is driving me crazy

Published Nov 15, 2026, 8:00 AM EST Sanuj is a freelance tech journalist with over six years of experience covering smartphones, wearables, and consumer technology. He currently writes for Android Police, Tom's Guide, Android Central, Android Authority, and Pocket-lint. He has previously contributed to publications like Pocketnow and MakeUseOf. Since the start of 2025 alone, he has tested over 30 smartphones. He has also attended major global trade shows including MWC (2024, 2025, 2026) and IFA (2024, 2025), along with launch events hosted by Google, Samsung, and other leading Android brands. When he's not writing about tech, you'll find him sipping a cup of chai, scrolling Twitter, and reading updates about his favorite football club, Chelsea FC. Feel free to reach out to him via email at sanujb6 [at] gmail [dot] com. Google Messages is one of my most-used apps, and for the most part, I really like what Google has been doing with it lately. I love that you can now copy a specific part of a message instead of the entire text, and I've also been using the swipe-to-reply gesture often, similar to how I use it on WhatsApp. But every once in a while, Google introduces a change that makes me wonder why it needed to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place. And that's exactly how I feel about the new pinned conversations UI. I've been using it for a while now, and while the new search button is a welcome addition, I can't say the same about Google's redesign of pinned conversations. The new pinned chats UI in Google Messages feels like a downgrade Google fixed something that wasn't broken Earlier this month, Google started rolling out a new pinned chats UI for the Messages app. Previously, pinning a chat in Google Messages moved it to the top of the conversation list with a small pinned icon next to it. But Google now seems to have taken inspiration from iMessage, introducing a new interface where pinned chats appear as large circular icons with the contact's photo and their name underneath. I received the new pinned chats UI in Google Messages earlier this week, although I've seen several users on Reddit reporting that the redesigned interface still isn't available to everyone. Having used the new layout for the past few days, I have a couple of thoughts. First, the new circular icons make it much clearer which conversations are pinned to the top. They're easier to distinguish from the rest of the messages in Google Messages, and you can also rearrange pinned conversations by holding and dragging them around. When a new message arrives from a pinned conversation, the circular icon also shows a preview of the latest message in place of the contact's profile photo, making it easier to see what's new. Still, there are some clear downgrades compared to the previous interface. First, you can now pin only up to six conversations, whereas the previous layout allowed up to 20. The new pinned chats also take up considerably more space at the top of the screen. If you have six conversations pinned, you're essentially losing half of your screen space. Old Google Messages pinned chats UI What's even more annoying is that if you have just four pinned chats, there's a lot of wasted white space, with the pinned section still taking up a large portion of the screen. Also, if a pinned conversation hasn't received a new message recently, you can no longer see the last message you exchanged from the Google Messages home screen. Sure, the new pinned chats UI looks sleek, and it's clearly designed to feel familiar to people coming from iMessage. But I feel Google could have improved it by letting users swipe through pinned conversations when there are more than three, or at least offering that as an option. The circular icons look nice, but you're also sacrificing quite a bit of useful screen space in the process. The new search button is easily my favorite change so far Finding old messages and conversations now feels much easier Alongside the new pinned messages UI, Google has also rolled out a redesigned search button and a new Start Chat button in the app. Search, which used to sit at the top of the screen, is now placed next to the floating Start Chat button at the bottom, and I'm a huge fan of this change. By default, the search icon is smaller, while the Start Chat button is larger. But as you start scrolling down, the Start Chat button collapses, making both options easier to access. Old search icon in Google Messages So, if you're looking for a specific conversation, you can quickly jump into search without scrolling all the way to the top. The animation and the way these buttons expand and collapse are really well done. But what I particularly like is how accessible search has become. What used to be stuck at the top of the screen is now easily reachable with your thumb. Thankfully, at least for me, the Gemini button has also disappeared from the bottom of the screen. I always found it annoying, especially since I never really used Gemini inside Google Messages. Just give us the option to switch back, Google I'm sure the new UI is designed to appeal to iPhone users who have recently switched from iOS to Android, and while it looks clean, Google should at least give users the option to switch back to the previous layout. That said, there are a couple of other Google Messages settings you can change to make the overall experience a little less annoying.