Google introduced the pinch-to-zoom gesture in the Messages app last June. It allowed users to quickly resize the text by pinching on the screen, like increasing the text size on a web page or zooming in on an image. Along with the text, things like timestamps, message bubbles, quick-reply prompts, and the compose field also change in size. This is a handy feature to have, particularly for people who have problems with eyesight. However, there’s a problem with this feature too. It is enabled by default and you can’t turn it off. This could allow for accidental triggers, which could be frustrating at times. Thankfully, Google is now about to fix it.
Google Messages is adding a setting to disable pinch to zoom
According to 9to5Google, who performed this APK teardown, the latest version of Google Messages has a hidden toggle option in settings with the following description: Pinch to zoom conversation text. The publication could enable this hidden feature and it works as you’d expect. The toggle lets you turn on/off the pinch-to-zoom gesture. When you turn it off, Google Messages does not respond to pinch gestures on the screen. So this will prevent accidental triggers if you don’t use this feature. For those who find the pinch-to-zoom gesture helpful, they can continue to use it as before. Perhaps there’s something new for them as well. Google Messages holds onto the current text size if you disable the gesture from the new toggle. So you can lock the app to the text size that you are most comfortable with. Google Messages does currently apply any size changes that you make to the currently-open conversation to all conversations. However, the same problem of accidental triggers could unintentionally change that. So the new toggle is helpful to everyone, those who use the pinch-to-zoom gesture as well as those who don’t. Note that pinch-to-zoom doesn’t affect icons, on-screen buttons, contact avatar, menu texts, and the main list view of chats. As said before, this new toggle in Google Messages was spotted in version 20220121 of the app, which is currently rolling out to beta testers. However, the feature is hidden and isn’t available publicly yet. But since it appears to be ready for prime time, it couldn’t be long before a public rollout begins.
