Google Messages finally rolling out gallery + camera redesign with ‘HD+’ quality

Abner Li | Jun 5 2025 - 3:01 pm PT

After testing first got underway in November of 2024, Google Messages is now widely rolling out a big redesign of the gallery and camera interface.

Upon tapping the gallery icon in the text field, Google Messages no longer slides up a half sheet that combines a live camera and recent images. You now get a fullscreen viewfinder that takes up the top portion of the screen. The camera controls remain unchanged from before.

At the bottom, you now have a grid showing 3-6 of your most recent images. Swipe up to fully expand with a “Folders” shortcut at the bottom that brings up the system photo picker.

After taking a new picture or selecting an existing one, there’s a nice preview with the background blurred. You can “Write a caption” before sending, while there’s a trash icon in the bottom-left corner. If you’re sending multiple, swipe left/right to browse.

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Top comment by Glitter Guru

Liked by 2 people

I still think Android media search has a lot of room for improvement. It would make more sense if the default gallery view showed your main camera roll or all photo galleries, with an easy-to-access search. Right now, finding a specific photo means scrolling to the bottom, tapping Folders, then the hidden Browse button, then Photos, and even then, you have to know that search only works within the main Photos folder. Maybe Google should consider removing Drive and device storage browsing altogether. If the focus were purely on Photos, which is what most people are actually looking for, it would make the app much simpler and more intuitive. And if you want to send something from Drive or elsewhere, go directly to the Files or Drive app.

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In the app bar, you get an “HD” or “HD+” icon. Replacing the existing preference in Messages > Settings, your options are:

Optimize for chat: Send quality media faster, uses less data
Original quality: Sends at full resolution

This Google Messages gallery + camera redesign has been in testing for a long time, with it slowly trickling out over the past few months. As of Thursday afternoon, we’re seeing it widely roll out to the stable (version 20250518_01_RC00) and beta (android_20250603_02_RC00) channels. (Be sure to Force stop from App info.)

Overall, this is a nice interface that has gotten more polished through the testing phrase. That said, it might take some time to adjust to the new gallery aspect of this redesign. Compared to before, you can’t access it as quickly.