We use Google Messages to stay in touch with our friends and family, send pictures, or share links to interesting articles we find online. When a link is sent to you by another contact, you will see a preview of the page in Google Messages, known as link previews. A future update of Google Messages could change how these link previews appear.

Digging through Google Messages beta (messages.android_20250922_00_RC00), Android Authority found that Google Messages is working on multiple tweaks to link previews.

Among the most significant changes is the disappearance of the URL’s full text when the user sends a message that contains only the URL. However, the URL text appears normally if the message also contains additional text. This suggests that the redesign is not functioning as intended at the moment, which makes sense since the overhaul is still in its early stages of development.

The screenshots above illustrate the changes perfectly, with the first image displaying the existing format of link previews in Google Messages, while the second depicts the under-development redesign. This is not the extent of the changes that Google Messages is working on for link previews, though.

Interestingly, this redesign completely removes the two-line description below the article title, which will certainly be a big loss for many users.

What we do like is how link previews borrow the color from the article’s primary image, as shown in the third image above. This is undoubtedly more appealing to the eyes and has the benefit of making each article look different from the rest. If you look closely, you will also notice that the font for the article title and other elements is more pronounced with the updated design.

Lastly, Google’s messaging app could also add a shortcut to quickly forward a link you’ve received using a forward/share button. This isn’t dissimilar to how users can currently reshare media they’ve received in Google Messages. Forwarding links this way will be a big improvement over the current solution, which requires users to long-press the URL and then access the share button from the three-dot menu.

It’s hard to tell when these features will be rolled out to Google Messages users more broadly, or if Google even intends to make them available at some point. While I like the addition of colors and bolder fonts, removing the article description and the URL text from a URL-only message doesn’t seem particularly user-friendly.

What are your thoughts on this under-development redesign of link previews in Google Messages?