Meet Google Reply: smart message replies straight in your notifications shade

Google has a new app for Android, and it is essentially a feature that you'd expect to see baked into a future Android iteration on the system level.

The app is called Reply and it introduces smart contextual replies for any messaging app that allows you to reply directly to inbound notifications. Let us explain. When you normally receive a text over Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Android Messages, Skype, or Slack, you can reply to the message straight from the notification shade of your device; Google's Reply sort of 'hijacks' this feature and instead provides you with a couple of contextual smart reply options that you can simply tap to send. In our experience, the message options are not only often on spot, but also include quite a bit of sass in them, which makes them look that much more human-like.