If you haven't been paying attention lately, the Samsung Messages app on your Galaxy smartphone is going away. Samsung announced the discontinuation of the Samsung Messages app back in April 2026, saying the app would lose the ability to send and receive text messages starting in July 2026.
While the Samsung Messages app still does a few things better than the alternatives, like offering deeper chat customization and a cleaner experience without Gemini integrations everywhere, Samsung has clearly made up its mind. This means the app will effectively become useless later this year.
Google Messages will automatically transfer your chats with a single step
With Samsung Messages being discontinued, Samsung is officially recommending that users switch to Google Messages as the default messaging app on their phone. Google has spent the past few years improving Google Messages, and at this point, it has become a fairly solid replacement for most Samsung users.
Thankfully, once you switch from Samsung Messages to Google Messages, your chats and existing conversations will transfer over automatically. You don't really need to do anything extra apart from setting Google Messages as your default messaging app.
Samsung says that depending on the version of One UI running on your Galaxy phone, you'll receive an in-app notification in the Samsung Messages app prompting you to move over to Google Messages. From there, you'll be asked to download Google Messages from the Play Store if it isn't already installed on your device.
Once you install and open Google Messages, you'll see a prompt asking you to make it your default SMS app. Just tap Set default SMS app, select Google Messages, and then tap Set as default again. And that's pretty much it.
Samsung says that once Google Messages is set as the default, all your conversations will automatically transfer over from Samsung Messages.
That said, depending on how many messages and media files you have, it might take some time for everything to fully appear. Samsung notes that some conversations may temporarily look missing while the app re-indexes your messages, and the process could take up to a full day.
What's nice is that Samsung is also trying to make the switch feel seamless. On newer Galaxy phones, the company will automatically replace the Samsung Messages icon on your home screen with the Google Messages icon, so you don't have to retrain your muscle memory.
However, users on Android 12 or Android 13 may have to manually add the Google Messages app to the home screen themselves.
What to do if your Samsung Messages chats don't transfer immediately
A few users have recently reported issues with messages temporarily disappearing after switching apps, but Samsung says those conversations aren't actually lost. The data and media still remain stored locally on the device while Google Messages re-indexes everything in the background.
Once the indexing process finishes, all your conversations should properly show up inside Google Messages. So if you don't see your messages being transferred over immediately, you should see them within 48 hours of transferring your chats.
It's also worth noting that even though Samsung Messages is being discontinued, Samsung says users will still be able to use the app for emergency communication, including contacting emergency services and emergency contacts.
Samsung also mentions that this discontinuation currently only applies to the U.S. region. There still isn't much clarity around other regions, so for now, the app may continue to work elsewhere.
That said, if you're in the U.S., you can still continue using Samsung Messages as your default app for a couple more months before the shutdown fully kicks in.
However, Google Messages has caught up in a lot of ways over the past few years, and if you don't want to wait until the deadline, you can simply download Google Messages from the Play Store and switch over right away.
