Overview
- The new floating long-press menu, which started appearing widely on Sept. 24–25, replaces the old top action toolbar and presents actions directly beneath a tapped message.
- Tapping or long-pressing a message or image now reveals a compact menu with Reply, Forward, Copy, Star, Delete, Select more, Info and photo actions such as Remix and Save.
- Selective text copying lets users press and drag to highlight only part of a message before copying, so addresses, codes or short snippets can be copied without grabbing the whole bubble.
- Google is rolling the change out via server-side flags so users on both beta and stable builds — including non‑Pixel phones — report seeing it in specific app builds like 20260903_04, 20260910_03_RC02 and 20260917_03.
- The redesign includes visual and haptic touches such as background blur, centering animation and iconed actions to improve discoverability, and users may need to restart the app to enable the feature if it is gated.