A lot of tasks and services these days are tied either to an email account or our phone number to authenticate our identity before proceeding. As a result, we often get a load of OTPs (One Time Passwords) through the weeks -- for every time you log into the service on a new device, for when you access the service, and in several countries, whenever you make payments through internet banking, and credit and debit cards. These OTPs can start clogging your inbox and make it difficult to find messages that do warrant your attention at a later date. Google seems to have taken cognizance of this issue, as the latest Google Messages update prepares to let you automatically delete OTPs after 24 hours of receipt.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Google Messages v6.7.067 contains the following new strings:

        <string name="otp_auto_deletion_promo_banner_body_text">Auto-delete OTPs after 24hrs</string>
<string name="otp_auto_deletion_promo_banner_negative_button_text">No thanks</string>
<string name="otp_auto_deletion_promo_banner_positive_button_text">Continues</string>
<string name="otp_content_description">This message is categorized as a one-time password</string>

According to these strings, Google Messages is working on a feature that will automatically delete OTP messages after 24 hours from their receipt. OTPs by very nature are temporary in nature, with most of them being valid for a short time duration of 10 minutes or so, depending on the needs of the service. Once this validity period expires, there's little use to be derived from keeping these messages around. Users may also not always remember deleting these messages once they are done, so automatically deleting them after a day seems to be a useful addition.

Other OEMs have resorted to decluttering the primary inbox by displaying OTPs and other promotional messages in a separate secondary inbox. Google's approach to decluttering appears to be better as OTPs practically have no future utility. The feature will likely roll out as an option, so if you do want to keep your OTP messages around, you should be covered too.

Messages Developer: Google LLC
Price: Free
4.2
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Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.