Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google introduced Take a Message as an alternative to voicemail on the Pixel 10.
- We already identified work towards supporting custom greetings for individual callers in Take a Message.
- That work now appears to be much further along, and Google could introduce the feature at any moment.
Last year, Google brought Pixel users a powerful new option for dealing with missed voice calls in the form of Take a Message. Launching with the Pixel 10, we saw access expand down through the Pixel 6 series, and it wasn’t long before we were already starting to uncover possible new features, like the ability to easily set custom voicemail greetings for your contacts. That one’s still not quite ready for prime time, but some recent changes sure have us thinking that Google could be about to push the update live at any moment.
Recording customized outgoing voicemail messages for specific contacts is already something you can do — it just happens through your carrier. But last fall, we identified early development work towards Google bringing that same kind of functionality to Take a Message, letting you control it all straight from your phone.
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At the time, we were able to surface a new “Manage greetings” options and see the beginning of the new voicemail-recording process — but it was very much incomplete. Now with Google’s version 214.0.888174602-publicbeta-pixel update of its Phone app for Android, we’re able to see quite a bit more.
Not only do we see that introductory messages telling users about the feature’s arrival, but we’re now able to get recordings to actually work:
Of course, you’re still not obligated to record custom voicemail greetings for each and every one of your contacts, and any you don’t assign custom recordings to will just hear a default one, instead.
Technically, Google could still end up sitting on this for as long as it likes, but based on the amount of progress we’re seeing here, it definitely feels like the company’s motivated in getting this addition out in the relatively near future.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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