Google’s Material 3 Expressive is Android’s next-gen design language, building on elements of Material 3. We’ve already seen more than a handful of Google apps gaining the new design language, including key apps like Google Messages.
So far, we’ve seen Google’s messaging app incorporate M3 Expressive elements in multiple phases, with the more recent redesign bringing the design language to the chat screen. Now, Google Messages is rolling out the design for the account switcher menu as well. With this design update, the Material 3 Expressive makeover of Google Messages is officially complete.
There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, and you’ll find the same elements as with the redesigns of apps like Gmail, Maps, Drive, and others.
The menu items aren’t changing either, though coming from the older version, users will find that the items are now split into two groups/containers under “More from this app” (via 9to5Google).
More upgrades are coming to Google Messages
The older account switcher menu vs the updated version
The first group contains Your Profile, Archived, Spam & block, Mark all as read, and Device pairing, while the second group includes Your data in Messages, Messages settings, and Help & feedback. However, the actual account switcher and the user avatar are quite large, which, as 9to5 points out, may not really be required for an app like Google Messages.
While it’s a nice touch for apps like Gmail or Drive, where you may have to switch between multiple accounts more often than not, Google Messages users are unlikely to switch accounts with the same frequency. Nevertheless, this design is fully consistent with what we’ve seen with other Google apps in the recent past, and we can’t fault Google for at least maintaining consistency across its apps.
I’m seeing the updated account switcher menu in version 20251006_02_RC00 beta of Google Messages, though 9to5Google notes that it’s also rolling out to the stable version of the app.
In addition to these design changes, the Messages team is working on a couple of functionality-related improvements for the app. Prominent among them is the upcoming integration of Google’s Nano Banana model, a.k.a. Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. Separately, we’ve also learned about upcoming changes to link previews in chats, along with an “Insights” feature for the messaging app.
