Is your Google Messages inbox a mess? This overlooked setting cleans it up

Google Messages is the default messaging app on Android phones, and it only keeps getting better with time. It’s also the default app for all your One Time Passwords or OTPs for sign-in codes or parcel delivery codes, and these messages can quickly make the app feel cluttered. Other than tapping the “Mark as read” button in the notification pop-up or simply ignoring the OTP message since I’ve already read it on my smartwatch, I don’t think I’ve ever manually deleted a single OTP myself, ever!

Google noticed this problem and introduced a solution in 2021 to automatically remove OTPs after 24 hours. The Messages app should have given you a pop-up alert within the app to enable it, but there’s a chance you might not have noticed this. If your Google Messages app is looking like an OTP wasteland, here’s how you can quickly check if this feature is enabled or not.

How to enable the auto-delete OTP feature in Messages

To check this setting, open the Google Messages app and tap your profile photo in the top-right corner. Towards the bottom section, tap on Messages settings. Somewhere in the middle of all the options, you’ll find Message organization. Tap it, and you’ll be taken to the next page, which will have just one item called Auto-delete OTP messages after 24 hours. Make sure the toggle button is enabled, and that’s about it.

The following steps were carried out on a Pixel 10 Pro XL running Android 17, but it should be similar to any other Android phone with a recent version of the Messages app.

Take back control of your Messages app

The auto-delete OTP toggle in Google Messages is disabled by default, which is why it’s important that you enable it right away if you haven’t already done it. This setting will not only delete standalone OTP messages but even OTP messages received inside a message thread from, say, your carrier or a courier company. It’s one of those ‘do it once and forget about it’ settings on your phone that you ought to have enabled.

The Google Messages app is also gaining a ton of functionality as Google keeps pumping it with new features. In addition to RCS messaging support, Google has recently added a range of new features to make Messages even more powerful. There’s a dedicated Gemini button built into the app to help you draft messages, plan activities, and more. I’ve personally never used it and find it unnecessary. If you feel the same way, you can easily get rid of it.

You can even customize each chat in Google Messages now by applying a chat theme, a very neat feature for your close contacts. The most recent September Android Drop update introduced Google Keep-like functionality in Messages that lets you create a checklist, and everyone in the thread can modify it.

To make Google Messages work best for you, you’ll need to dig into the settings and explore all the customization it offers. It’s definitely not the perfect messaging app, but it’s getting there slowly.