Google Messages may not be your favorite texting app, but it’s certainly the one you use most often. In fact, it’s so much more than a texting app—it also allows you to send and receive GIFs, doodles, and of course emojis. But if you love reacting to conversations with an emoji, prepare to have your world rocked—Google has plans to give you total emoji freedom with the ability to react with any emoji in Google Messages! Here’s how it will work...

How to Use Reactions in Google Messages

Google is rolling out a new feature in Google Messages called Reactions, which will allow you to react with any emoji you want. To use this feature, tap the emoji icon next to the message field. This will open a drawer of emojis that you can scroll through and pick the one that best captures how you feel about your friend's message.

Once you've chosen an emoji, it will be displayed as your reaction in the chat and it will also show up in notifications if someone doesn't open the conversation or taps See More in order to view your full chat history.

Your choice of emoji won't affect what others see, so they'll still see the original message when they receive it. There are two exceptions:

1) If you tap and hold on another user's name in Google Messages, their profile photo will appear;

2) If you add yourself to a group chat with more than one person participating (more than two), then whatever emoji you used will display at the top of that chat.

The same idea applies for other Google services like Hangouts, Allo, and G+, but because of the limitations inherent to those platforms-namely lack of compatibility with iOS devices-Google has introduced Reactions in Google Messages first. Right now, only Group chats can have different reactions within the app. And while there are three default options  before sending a message.

You could have everyone set to kisses and kisses would show up in all of your messages, says Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Engineering at Google. But should you run into someone who always chooses laughter, perhaps it's time for them to switch things up.

What You Can React With

Google is rolling out a new feature in Google Messages that will let you react with any emoji you like. The new feature, called Reactions, will let you react in one of six ways: Like, Love, Haha, Wow!, Sad or Angry. It's available now as part of an update to the app, so go get it and start expressing yourself! In addition to being able to use the emoticons, Google has created twelve illustrations for the six different emotions they offer.

Each image appears next to your text when reacting. So if I want to show that I am happy about something in my conversation with someone else I can send them this little guy (????). It may be just a little thing but at least there are twelve new images for me and everyone else on Google Message to use. Google also added a Send Feedback button to the app which lets you report problems with features and suggest features Google might add in future updates.

How Reactions Will Appear in Conversations

Reactions are a fun and simple way to let someone know how you feel without having to type it all out, but if you're like me and type a lot, it can also be helpful. The new Google Messages reactions will show up right next to the text of your message in any conversation you send or receive.

Plus, instead of just being limited to the list of eight suggested emoji Google previously offered, they now give you the option of reacting with any emoji that suits your mood or sentiment. They're rolling this feature out first in Android messaging apps only for now, but soon iPhone users will have access as well! For more information on what other updates they've been working on at Google, check out their blog post here. If you enjoyed reading about these upcoming features, make sure to share this post with your friends!

How to Remove a Reaction

Reactions are great, but they can be annoying if you're tired of seeing the same emoji over and over again. Luckily, it's easy enough to remove them. Go into Google Messages and open up the conversation in which you want to react by tapping or clicking on it in your message list. At the top of the screen, just tap or click the three dots that you'll see next to any reactions and select Remove reactions.

If a reaction is only showing as an emoticon rather than an emoji, for instance when a person messages back at you with a shrug ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄ , then this won't work because there's no graphic representation of the reaction. The other way to get rid of reactions is to turn off read receipts. Just go into Settings and find the slider for read receipts under Chat preferences. Once you've turned them off, all other people will be unable to see when you've seen their messages or reacted to what they said!