For all the work that Google has put into improving the Messages app, it still misses the mark in certain aspects, which negatively affect the overall experience. One of them is the inability to selectively copy a part of the text. Thankfully, it seems Google has finally decided to address this pain point.
Right now, if you long-press a message in Google Messages and tap the copy option, it copies the entire text. That’s frustrating when you only need a specific portion.
Due to this, you have to copy the full message, paste it into another app, and manually delete the extra text before sending it. Thankfully, Google is working on allowing users to select a part of the text to copy.
In a future update, long-pressing a message will bring up a contextual menu. From there, you can highlight and copy specific text. If you use the Copy option directly from the long-press menu, the app will still copy the entire message.
The Android Authority team activated the enhanced copy-paste functionality in the latest Google Messages beta (messages.android_20260212_01_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic). It appears to be in early testing, as it is only live for select users, even on the beta channel.
Still, this is a positive development, as Google has at last realized that this annoying limitation in the Google Messages app needs to be resolved. We might have to wait a few months before the company eventually rolls out this improvement to Google Messages on the public channel.
Google already knows how to do this
Google allows for granular text selection in most of its apps, including Gmail and Chrome. This only makes Google Messages’ behavior more of an outlier and all the more frustrating.
Interestingly, the company offers a smarter approach in certain cases. For messages that contain a one-time password, the app surfaces a dedicated Copy shortcut that extracts only the OTP. So, there’s little reason it has not added partial text selection for regular chats.
Other messaging apps, including Telegram and iMessage, also allow for selectively copying a part of a text. WhatsApp is the only other notable exception, as its Copy option also grabs the entire text.
