C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
The “Take a Message” feature on Google Phone may soon gain more customization options.
We’ve spotted the ability to set custom voicemail greetings using the feature.
Setting custom greetings currently requires you to do it through your carrier, and this change may make the process less annoying.
With all the advanced features added to our phones, basic ones, such as making calls or sending texts, may seem neglected. Thankfully, they aren’t entirely overlooked, especially as brands like Google introduce new features that help us make or screen calls more efficiently. One such feature is Google’s Take a Message in the Phone app, which automatically generates a text transcript of your voicemails.
The feature is available on Pixel 4 and newer devices in the US, the UK, Australia, and Ireland. At the beginning of the recording, you can also set a custom voicemail greeting, and Google now appears to be adding new options that could give you better control over those greetings.
Google appears to be expanding options to set a custom voicemail greeting for its Take a Message feature in the Phone app. Currently, you can set a custom voicemail greeting through your carrier by using the Take a Message feature. However, if you don’t set a custom message — or if your carrier does not allow voicemails — a default message plays while your Pixel phone records the caller’s message.
That may change soon, with Google allowing users to set a custom voicemail greeting without roping the carrier in. We spotted these settings being tested in the version 200.0.831411868 public beta of the Google Phone app.
To set a new custom message directly on their phone, users may soon see a new “Manage greetings” option under Settings > Take a Message inside the Phone app. This will open a new interface to record a custom message by tapping the mic button at the bottom. We suspect the interface might also show any other custom messages currently in use. Additionally, tapping the mic button should start a countdown timer before it starts recording your message.
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The current interface is very unstable and frequently crashes, suggesting that Google may take some time to implement it for a broader audience. It is entirely possible that it may not be implemented at all, despite the level of completeness suggesting otherwise.
⚠️ 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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