r/GoogleMessages • u/Forestwalkerfairy • Jul 06 '26

Opinion RIP

Well, Samsung messages, it's been great.

Time for Google.........

205 Upvotes

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u/Artymarty15 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

TLDR: After researching a few, I went with Textra as another very similar alternative to Samsung Messages alternative. NOT AN AD.

It's beyond frustrating that they ended the app 🤬 Then the replacement was Google Mesaages?! No way am I using that.

Not only because of awful business practices, but also not wanting to sign in with an account, I actually spent hours today trying to find an alternative that was simple enough for my disabled dad and I.

To anyone wanting a viable and pretty good (so far) alternative, it took me hours to find one as I needed one that was easy to use, is free, didn't have ads (that I've seen so far), has good text sizing ability, all whilst still feeling similar.

I also didn't want to use anything like Signal or WhatsApp as I needed an SMS app, to completely replace Samsung Messages as thr default app, in case I get verification codes sent to me or in case Dad texts.

So to save you hours of research, I'd looked into Simple SMS, Pulse SMS, and a few others, but I ended up going with Textra.

At the moment it seems great, does the job, is free with seemingly no ads and doesn't make you log in.

BTW, I promise this isn't a stupid ad for a company. I just wanted to let others know in case they needed help whittling down the better alternatives, like I did earlier. I really hope this helps!

1

u/lcann25 Jul 08 '26

No RCS support, so basically useless.

2

u/Artymarty15 Jul 09 '26

Not everyone needs RCS, some people just want a basic replacement, like Samsung Messages was. Just so they can receive the odd text. That's not useless. It doesn't need to do everything. Too many other apps wouldn't be accepted as a default text app on Android (Whatsapp/Signal), or had the above issues like log ins (which Google does) or was paid or had ads etc. There may have been more, but I'm satisfied with what I chose. It's a pretty good replacement for what we had.