If you’ve ever texted with an Android user, you know who conversations can quickly get overrun with “Jason laughed at” this or “Roman liked” that messages. As soon as an Android user joins a group conversation, Apple’s iMessage reaction expressions turn to text prompts so no one misses out on what’s happening.
That might be changing in a future Google Messages update. According to 9to5Google, who has dug through the APK for a beta version (10.7) of the app’s APK, Google has changed expressions such as “Liked,” “Emphasized,” and “Laughed” to “ios_reaction_classification” and “Show iPhone reactions as emoji” as well as “ios_reactions_mapping.”
It’s not entirely clear how the new reactions would work, but it seems as though Google is working on changing the way reactions are transposed by Android phones using Google Messages. Based on 9to5Google’s understanding, Messages will be tagged with a heart emoji rather than “Liked” and won’t need to repeat the entire message. Rather, the appropriate emoji would appear under the original message similar to how it works with iPhone users.
Read more at MacWorld.com