Google Messages wants to fill that birthday-reminder-shaped hole Facebook left in your life
Remembering your friends’ birthdays may or may not come naturally to you, but thanks to Facebook’s obsessive flood of notifications, many of us stopped trying to keep track long ago. But if you’ve left Facebook (or avoided joining in the first place), you’ll need a consistent and convenient way to know when to taunt your friends about getting older — and Google Messages is here to do just that, with a polite nudge.
Google began usingnudges to remind us to reply to those old text messages that had been left unanswered for too long, based on a feature that first appeared in Gmail back in 2018. Now there’s a new type of reminder popping up for people that have just turned one year older.
If you open Messages, there may be a few small visual clues about the birthday boy or girl, including a small cake image on their avatar, a simple “Happy Birthday” line below their latest message, and their message history may show a small banner advertising their birthday — this is the actual nudge. Of course, if you see any of these, you’re already in Google Messages, so it’s a convenient time to start messaging.
As you would expect, the birthdays are sourced from your contact list, so there may not be very many of these popping up unless you’ve been diligently seeking out birth dates like an identity thief.
If you’re not interested in getting birthday reminders through Google Messages, they’re pretty easy to turn off. Simply open Settings from the overflow menu, then tap into Suggestions -> Nudges, and toggle off Birthday reminders.
Thanks to@panduu221for spotting this andMishaal Rahmanfor bringing it to our attention.
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