Google Messages RCS Group Mentions and Trash Folder Explained
Google formally announced two long-requested features for Google Messages on March 20: @mentions in RCS group chats and a Trash folder that replaces permanent deletion with a 30-day recovery window. Both have been officially announced and are rolling out. Neither has reached most users yet, and on the day of the announcement, 9to5Google reported it wasn't seeing either feature in wide distribution.
The distinction matters. Google Messages users who check their phones today and find nothing new aren't missing something. These are server-side rollouts with no app update to install and no settings to enable. The features arrive when Google pushes them, not when users go looking.
The rollout gap: what "officially launched" actually means
Google's March 20 announcement was a communications decision, not a deployment milestone. Six days earlier, on March 14, 9to5Google was still categorizing both features as "rolling out (beta)" and "not yet widely available." The announcement date reflects when Google chose to go public, not when users got access.
By March 22, mentions had official status but remained in slow rollout. The Trash folder was similarly mid-distribution. This pattern isn't new to Google Messages. Message scheduling didn't arrive until December 2023, years after competitors had normalized it, and the gap between "some users have it" and "most users have it" historically runs longer than the announcement window suggests.
The Trash folder first appeared in beta build version 20260306_02_RC00, which was spotted on March 11, twelve days before the official announcement. Beta detection preceding general availability by days or weeks is standard for Google Messages features. If neither the Trash folder nor mentions have appeared on your device yet, that's the expected outcome.
How Google Messages RCS group mentions work
The mechanic is simple: type "@" in an RCS group chat, select a contact from the picker that appears, and that person receives a notification even if they've muted the conversation. The mute-override behavior is the whole point. Group chats get silenced because they're noisy; that same silence creates a coordination failure when something actually needs a response. Mentions break through it.
The implementation has some flexibility built in. Multiple contacts can be tagged in a single message, per Google's announcement via 9to5Google. The name displayed to other group members pulls from the sender's contact list and can be edited in real time before sending, so a stored last name can be stripped out before the message goes through.
The hard constraint: mentions are RCS-only. The feature has no effect in SMS or MMS threads. That means any group member whose carrier or device doesn't support RCS may not receive the same targeted notification behavior. How much that limits the feature depends entirely on the makeup of each group.
Group mentions first entered testing in November 2025. Four months from initial beta to official launch status. As of March 22, the feature had official standing but not universal reach.
To check right now: open an RCS group chat specifically, not a one-on-one thread, and type "@". If a contact picker appears, mentions are live on your device. If nothing happens, they haven't arrived yet.
How the Trash folder works, and how it differs from Archive
Until this week, Google's own support documentation stated plainly that deleting a conversation "cannot be recovered" and that "this action is permanent." That was the policy. One wrong tap and the thread was gone.
The Trash folder changes that. Deleting a conversation now means "Move to Trash," which holds it for 30 days before automatic permanent removal, according to 9to5Google. A one-tap restore brings the full thread back to the main inbox with history intact. There's also an immediate "Undo" prompt after the initial deletion, for cases where the regret is instantaneous.
The folder sits in the profile menu between Archive and Spam, accessible by tapping the profile icon in the app, per 9to5Google. Users can restore individual threads or wipe the folder entirely at any time.
Trash vs. Archive: a practical distinction
These two features solve different problems:
Archive hides a conversation from the main inbox but preserves it indefinitely; if a new message arrives in an archived thread, it resurfaces automatically
Trash is a timed staging area with a hard 30-day expiry; no incoming message restores a trashed conversation; it must be manually recovered
Archive is for threads you want to keep but don't want to see. Trash is for threads you intend to delete, with a month to reconsider.
Two caveats are worth knowing before relying on Trash as a safety net. On Android Go devices, the reduced-memory build for budget hardware, the retention window drops to 7 days rather than 30, explicitly to conserve storage, per 9to5Google. Second, manually emptying Trash before the period expires eliminates the recovery option entirely. The folder's existence doesn't protect a conversation from a deliberate purge.
The Trash folder is a genuine policy reversal. Google's prior support documentation treated deletion as permanent and irreversible; this replaces that with something substantially more forgiving. That it took this long is its own observation.
What to check and what to expect
Both features are officially rolling out as of March 20, 2026, with distribution that remains uneven:
Group mentions require an RCS-enabled group chat; type "@" in a group thread to test whether the contact picker appears
Trash folder replaces permanent deletion with a 30-day holding period; find it by tapping the profile icon and selecting Trash from the account menu, between Archive and Spam
Android Go users get a 7-day retention window rather than 30 days, and should factor that into how they use the feature
Manually emptying Trash removes the recovery option immediately, regardless of the 30-day clock
If neither feature is present on your device yet, there is no fix. No update to install, no toggle to flip. The rollout will reach more devices as Google expands it.
These are useful additions. They're also features that iMessage and WhatsApp users have had long enough to take for granted. The more consequential Google Messages development, cross-platform end-to-end encrypted RCS between Android and iPhone, is still ahead; as of iOS 26.4 beta 2, Apple and Google are testing it, per 9to5Google. For now, the practical question is simpler: check whether the features have arrived, understand what they actually do, and know the rollout is a matter of when, not if.
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