After making Google Messages the default messaging app since the Galaxy S21 series in 2021, Samsung stopped pre-installing Samsung Messages starting with the Galaxy S25 series. If it wasn’t clear where Samsung headed with these decisions, today, Samsung made it official: Samsung Messages is no longer part of Samsung’s future, at least in the US.
Samsung is moving on
A look at Samsung’s official page for Samsung Messages makes things pretty clear. The app is no longer being positioned as a primary experience. Instead, Samsung is directing users toward Google Messages as the default messaging platform on Galaxy devices. This is an official shift.
If you’ve been following Samsung closely, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Over the past few years, newer Galaxy phones have shipped with Google Messages as the default. Samsung Messages has slowly stopped receiving major updates. Moreover, RCS features have become more closely tied to Google’s ecosystem. Samsung had already been stepping back, and now it’s just making it obvious.
Why is Samsung doing this?
This move is all about standardization. Instead of maintaining its own messaging platform, Samsung is leaning fully into Google’s solution. This solution offers better RCS support, cross-device consistency, and faster feature updates. In short, it’s easier to let Google handle messaging and focus on other parts of the ecosystem, and the app will be officially discontinued from July 2026.
So what happens to Samsung Messages? For now, the app isn’t disappearing overnight. It will still work for older devices that have older Android versions (Android 11 or lower), according to the Samsung US webpage. But RCS chats might break temporarily if you’re using an older Galaxy device (pre-2022), and switching apps could cause some issues at first. Ongoing RSC conversations may get interrupted, they will resume once both users switch to Google Messages. Regular SMS and MMS will still work during the transition. So yeah, expect a bit of friction when switching.
However, there’s a bigger impact for users on older hardware, specifically watches. Devices running Tizen OS (basically Galaxy Watches released before the Galaxy Watch 4 series) don’t support Google Messages. You’ll still be able to send and receive texts. However, you won’t see the full conversation history anymore. So functionality stays, but the experience takes a hit.
How to make the switch?
To switch from Samsung Messages to Google Messages, you will need to open or install Google Messages. Then, tap “Set default SMS app”, select Google Messages, and confirm with “set as default”. If you’re on Android 12 or 13, there’s one extra step. The app won’t automatically appear in your dock, so you’ll need to remove Samsung Messages from the dock. After that, add Google Messages to the home screen, and drag it into place manually. Not a big deal, just something to know.
Samsung Messages has been around for years. For a lot of users, it was the default way to text on Galaxy phones. But that era is over. Samsung is officially handing messaging over to Google, and this is one of the clearest signs yet that One UI is becoming more tightly integrated with Google’s ecosystem.
Thanks W Vision from our SammyGuru team for the news!
