Videos and images in Google Messages have a smooth new animation (APK teardown)
TL;DR Google Messages may introduce a new animation for the media player.
Videos and images now slide into view from the bottom of the screen instead of fading in and out.
You can also swipe down to close an image or video.
Google is not new to tweaking its apps. Sometimes, those changes improve the experience, make the experience worse, or have no effect at all. The next tweak is coming for the Messages app, and it seems like an update that will fall into the improved category.
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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
When you want to expand an image or play a video in a Google Messages chat, you just have to tap on the image or video to bring up the media player. Currently, you'll see a fade-in animation when activating the media player and a fade-out animation when closing the player. You can see an example of the current animation in the video below.
While digging into Google Messages (version messages.android_20250719_00_RC00.phone_samsung_openbeta_dynamic), we found that Google is working on a new animation for the media player. This new animation has the image or video slide up from the bottom of the screen. In practice, the new animation looks silky smooth compared to the current animation.
In addition to this new animation, it looks like there's a new feature here as well. Previously, you had to swipe from the side of the screen to close out of the media player. However, this update adds the option to close the media player by swiping down, similar to Google Photos.
This discovery arrives shortly after a different APK teardown revealed Google could remove the 'G' logo from Messages. In its place, the company may be planning to use the full 'Google' wordmark.
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