According to The How-To Geek, Google is currently testing @mentions in Google Messages group chats through its beta program. The feature was first spotted back in June and is now appearing for users on the latest beta version 20251103_00_RC00. When you type “@” in an RCS group chat, your contacts pop up for selection, and the mention will notify people even if they’ve muted the conversation. Google is gradually rolling this out to beta testers before a wider release, meaning not everyone with the updated app has access yet. This comes after 6-8 months of Google steadily adding new features like sensitive content warnings and improved spam blocking to Messages.
Finally catching up
Look, this is one of those features that feels like it should have been there years ago. Basically every other messaging platform from Facebook Messenger to Slack has had @mentions forever. But Google Messages is finally getting there, and honestly, it’s about time. The implementation sounds pretty smart too – you can edit the displayed name while keeping the mention intact, so you don’t have to broadcast someone’s full contact card to the entire group. It’s the little things that matter.
Why this matters
Here’s the thing about group chats – they can get chaotic fast. Someone asks an important question and it gets buried under twenty “haha” reactions. Or you need to get your friend’s attention about dinner plans but they’ve muted the chat because it’s too active. The @mention system solves this by cutting through the noise. And since it works even when notifications are muted, it’s perfect for those “hey, this is actually important” moments. Reddit users who’ve gotten the feature seem pretty excited about it, which tells you something.
Google’s messaging momentum
Google’s been on a roll with Messages lately. New spam tools, better group chat features, sensitive content warnings – they’re clearly trying to make this a competitive messaging platform. 9to5Google spotted the @mention feature brewing months ago, and now we’re seeing it actually land in the wild. I think this is part of Google’s broader push to make RCS actually useful against iMessage and other platforms. They’re slowly but steadily closing the feature gap.
When you’ll get it
So when can you actually use this? Well, if you’re in the beta program, you might see it pop up any day now. But Google’s doing that gradual rollout thing they love so much, so even beta users might be waiting a bit. For everyone else? Probably a few weeks or months depending on how testing goes. The good news is that once it’s stable, it should work across any RCS group chat, which means everyone in the conversation needs to be using Messages with RCS enabled. But hey, at least we’re finally getting proper @mentions. It’s 2024 – about time, right?
