The Google Messages redesign is now official, the hamburger button is no more

The hamburger button, menu icon, slide drawer icon, slide drawer navigation button, the three lines button… call it whatever you wish, it’s gone from the Google Messages app. This is part of Google’s home screen redesign for Messages that only a handful of users got their eyes on as early as this past June. Now, it’s official and being rolled out to everyone (via 9to5Google).

The user interface change has been in beta testing for some months now and it seems the tests were satisfactory to Google’s taste, as the new look is now official. Until now, upon opening the Google Messages app, there was a search field at the very top of the screen.

The redesigned home screen now displays (left-to-right) four elements. The first two are both non-clickable and are to the left of the screen: the (in)famous “G” logo in Google’s four-color palette, and a “Messages” title text.

Over at the right side, there’s a magnifying glass icon that’s doing what the now-missing search field was doing; the last element is the profile avatar button that opens the app’s menu. This is where you can now find Archived, Spam & blocked, Mark as all read, and Device pairing, as well as options for managing your account and digging into the app’s general settings.

Let’s go back to the magnifying glass icon for a moment. When you tap it, the good old search field appears on a new screen with eight filter boxes available for a refined search: “Unread, Known, Unknown, Starred, Images, Videos, Places, and Links”. Another change is that the Message organization feature has been removed: gone are the tabs at the top for All, Personal, and Business sections, but the “Auto-delete OTPs after 24 hrs” option remains available in settings.

Messages went from 1 billion to 5 billion installs since the pandemic

Google Messages is very popular, to say the least. Back in the spring of 2020, the app was downloaded one billion times. Except for the Google Pixel phone, the app was not pre-installed on many Android devices. In 2022, Samsung adopted it as its default messaging app for the Galaxy phones.

Another significant milestone was passed just the other day: the Google team announced the app has been installed over five billion times.