New Google Messages 'Profile' images will replace your contact photos

Among several new features, Google Messages service recently received public ‘Profiles’ to offer a more consistent experience when communicating with others. Something you should know is that the new ‘Profile’ set images will replace the contact photos that you have manually chosen before.

It seems that Google wants to unify the user experience between multiple products, and part of this is that the new Google Messages ‘Profile’ images will replace the contact photos that you have previously set through the Google Contacts app.

This can be quite useful for those who prefer such data to be ‘filled’ automatically, as they don’t want to waste time manually setting profile images for each contact. So, instead of seeing a generic image next to each contact, you will now see the image chosen by others for their profiles.

That said, this only happens with photos, so the names you have used to save your contacts will not be overwritten by the names chosen by each user in their profile. However, if you receive a message from a number that you do not have saved, you will see the name that person has set in their profile.

Google Messages ‘Profile’ is a feature that allows you to choose a name for your profile and an image, which will be synchronized with your phone number. So, all other users will be able to see that information when receiving an RCS message even if they do not have your phone number saved.

This makes the Google Messages experience similar to other popular messaging apps. Also, according to Google, the name and photo you choose will also help others recognize you through more ‘Google products’.

It should be noted that this feature is not mandatory since you can disable it, as 9to5Google spotted in mid-November. From the ‘Profile Discovery’ section you can turn it off for privacy reasons or because you prefer the classic user experience.

Google’s official announcement notes that the new Profiles will ‘address the problem of receiving messages from phone numbers not saved in your contacts, which can be particularly useful in group chats so that you know who all the other participants in the group are‘.

To top it all off, it’s still not entirely clear in which other Google services the image and name you use in the ‘Profile’ section will appear, so we’ll have to wait for more official details on the matter.