Textra update: customizable bubble color, Lollipop support

With free messaging apps on your smartphone becoming even more interactive and fun with stickers, video messages, etc, one of the original purposes of a cellphone is seemingly slowly getting lost or obsolete. You can probably count on your fingers how many times you actually send SMS messages in a day, preferring to use other apps like LINE, Viber, FB Messages, etc. But there are some SMS apps that are trying to bring back the “fun” in texting and one of them is Textra. The latest update will make your texting life more colorful and more Lollipop-y.

With Android Lollipop just around the corner (we sure hope so!), apps are scrambling to make sure they’re ready. Design-wise, Textra was ahead of other messaging apps, adapting Google’s now ubiquitous Material Design in an update last month, even before we knew it was not lemon merengue pie. Now, Version 2.13, which is already their third update just this month, brings more Android Lollipop support, although what that support exactly is, they did not enumerate in their change log.

But probably the most obvious difference in this update is that you can now customize the colors of your message bubbles, depending on which contact you’re talking to. So if you feel like assigning pink to the bubbles in your message thread with your little sister, you just need to long press the convo from the inbox, click on the menu (those three dots on the upper right) and then customize the bubble colors.

The update should have rolled out by now to your smartphone. If you don’t have Textra yet and want to see what the SMS fuss is about, you can download it for free from the Google Play Store.