Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
TL;DR
- An Android Authority teardown of the latest Google Messages beta has revealed a change to group chat icons in testing.
- We managed to activate the option to remove a group chat icon and restore the default four-avatar grid.
- Right now, you can only change the group chat icon; you can’t remove it.
One of the little quirks of a Google Messages group chat is that once you set a picture as the group icon, you can’t go back. You can swap it for another photo, but there’s no way to remove it entirely and return to the default look. That might be about to change.
In one of the latest beta versions (v.messages.android_20250922_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic), we managed to activate an option in testing that lets you remove a group icon completely and start from scratch.
The screenshots above show how the change works. When active, tapping the group icon from the group details page opens it full-screen. A new option in the three-dots menu appears, which reads “Remove group icon.” Hitting that and confirming brings back the default grid-style icon that shows four participant avatars.
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Google Messages has seen a steady stream of tweaks this year, from sensitive-content warnings for nudity to the broader rollout of Delete for everyone. It hasn’t all been progress, though, with some regions reporting patchy RCS availability. We don’t know if this option to restore the default group icon will roll out, or when, but it fits the pattern of Google continuing to polish the app.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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