Google Messages Now Sorts Your Text Messages into Categories, Auto-Deletes Used OTPs

Google Messages is the default SMS app on several Android smartphones across the world, and just like every other Google service, this app gets the latest feature updates now and then. Google has now announced introducing a feature that’ll help you organize your text messages much better and auto-delete all those one-time passwords (OTPs) to avoid misuse.

The search giant has started a new categories feature within the app, which leverages machine learning to sort messages into four broad categories. These categories are personal transactions, offers, OTPs, and conversations with stored contacts. Several first-party messaging apps from OPPO and Vivo already have a similar sorting feature baked into their messaging app. Still, for those who use the Google Messages app, this could help de-clutter your SMS inbox.

As for OTP, it generally becomes useless when you have used them for a transaction or some cross-verification step. So, keeping it safe inside your inbox doesn’t make any sense. All it would do is clutter your messages inbox and generate a pile of OTPs.

“We’re also providing the option to automatically delete your one-time passwords (OTPs) 24-hours after they’re received, so you won’t have to waste time deleting them yourself,” read Google’s blog post. “To enable it [the feature], just tap continue when you see the suggestion prompt to validate your selection.”

Although these features have been announced only for the Google Messages users in India for now, Google does note that those two new features will go live “over the coming weeks” on Android phones elsewhere.

There is one prerequisite, though — you need to make sure that your device runs on Android 8 Oreo or above for the features to work.