Google Messages is rethinking how link previews work, but we’re not sure it’s for the best

What do you think about before clicking on a link? Are you the sort of user who scrutinizes the URL, looking for any info that may help clarify what sort of content awaits on the other end? Do you just blindly click through without thinking twice? Or have you gotten used to apps that offer a bit of a preview, summarizing where the link goes with a headline and maybe even image teaser? Today we’re looking at that kind of preview action in one particular app, as we spot some in-development changes to how Google Messages handles link sharing.

Let’s start by taking a look at how link previews already work in Messages. Whether you send someone just a plain link, or a link plus some accompanying text, Messages attempts to pull the page title, a primary graphic, page description, and finally lists the hosting site.

There’s a lot to like about that reasonably thorough approach to handling links, but in Google Messages version messages.android_20250922_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic, we’ve been able to get the app to give us an early preview of a not-yet-used alternative style for these previews.

The first thing we notice is a change to how Messages handles including the text URL. In the screen on the left here, we sent two messages, just like in our first example. But for the one that was a URL alone, with no accompanying text, Messages no longer displays the link, and only shows the preview. If you do include some additional text, as we see beneath, both the text and the full URL are still included.

Beyond that, we also spot some formatting changes, with the preview using a heavier font for the page title and the site hosting it, but omitting the longer page description. Honestly, this change is a bit of a mixed bag, as while we like better readability, not having the full URL is going to really upset some users, and dropping the description just feels like a loss for everybody.

You’ll note that Messages is adding a splash of color to these previews, and it appears to be getting that based on the image it pulls. Notice how with that set we tried on the right that each ends up with a nicely complementary color.

We also see that these link previews now feature sharing shortcuts, as Messages has already done with media like pictures and video, just making it that much easier to pass interesting ones along to additional friends.

Like we said, none of these changes are live yet, even in beta, and we’ll just have to be patient to learn which might ultimately graduate to public availability.