Sanuj Bhatia / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is investigating a bug that splits existing group chats into separate threads with the same participants.
- Affected users can end up with multiple versions of the same conversation, sometimes losing the continuity of their chat history.
- Similar reports involve individual RCS chats, but Google has yet to confirm whether they are related to the acknowledged group-chat bug.
Google Messages users haven’t exactly had a quiet summer. Google recently acknowledged an RCS connection bug affecting some users, and the company is still working with its carrier partners to get that problem under control. Now, another Messages problem has surfaced, and this one can leave your conversations scattered across multiple threads.
Google has confirmed that it is investigating an issue where group chats split into separate threads. Responding to an affected user on Reddit, Google said its team is actively looking into the problem and asked users to submit feedback through the Messages app with the hashtag #splittingthreads to help engineers investigate.
The problem appears to have been around for months. Users on Google’s Messages support forums describe existing group conversations suddenly creating new threads with the same participants, but without the previous message history. This can happen repeatedly during a single conversation, leaving seven or more separate chats involving the same people.
That sounds frustrating enough, but there’s another version of this problem that may hit even closer to home.
Deleting the duplicate doesn’t necessarily help, either. The next incoming reply simply brings the second thread back. Others have noticed that Messages for Web and Phone Link can combine the supposedly separate conversations, while the Android app continues treating them as different threads.
The reports span Pixel and Samsung phones, including users who recently upgraded through Samsung’s Smart Switch. Others say the problem appeared without a device change. Some have also noticed Messages switching between RCS and SMS/MMS around the time conversations split, although there’s no confirmation that this is responsible.
For now, Google’s acknowledgment specifically covers group chats splitting into separate threads. The company has not confirmed that the individual-chat reports are part of the same bug.
Still, with both problems producing eerily similar results, Google Messages users may be forgiven for wondering whether there’s more than one conversation-splitting gremlin hiding under the hood.
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