You're stuck with whatever Messenger decides to give you for each chat. The bright colors used for headers and text bubbles in chat windows are randomized between chats, and unfortunately there's no way to customize the colors. If you're a fan of this new style, you'll be happy with the way Google Messenger looks. The bold, colorful Material Design user interface fits with the new branding introduced to Google apps after the Android Lollipop update. The app integrates well with your existing Android contacts, allowing you to quickly access them and start messaging straight away through Messenger's attractive, streamlined interface. Lesser features such as the ability to archive chats, or to block certain contacts from sending you messages help to add to the usefulness of Google Messenger. What the app does do well is to pull these tools together in an attractive package that makes the process of sending SMS and MMS messages simpler and more enjoyable. In fact, the app has even less features than its previous Android Messaging app. So, in this sense, Google isn't doing anything new with its Messenger app. These features, of course, almost always come as standard in any messaging app, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, or Facebook Messenger. The app has been given a lick of Material Design paint and bundled with some useful features such as group messaging, audio messaging, emoji support, and photo/video transfer.

This is how Matrix democratises control over communication.īy default, Matrix uses simple HTTPS+JSON APIs as its baseline transport, but also embraces more sophisticated transports such as WebSockets or ultra-low-bandwidth Matrix via CoAP+Noise.Google Messenger is a re-imagining of the stock Messaging app that's pre-installed with most pre-Lollipop Android phones. This means that every server has total self-sovereignty over its users data - and anyone can choose or run their own server and participate in the wider Matrix network. Even if your server goes offline, the conversation can continue uninterrupted elsewhere until it returns. There is no single point of control or failure in a Matrix conversation which spans multiple servers: the act of communication with someone elsewhere in Matrix shares ownership of the conversation equally with them. When you send a message in Matrix, it is replicated over all the servers whose users are participating in a given conversation - similarly to how commits are replicated between Git repositories. Matrix is really a decentralised conversation store rather than a messaging protocol.

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