Personalize Your Calls: How to Use Custom Take a Message Greetings on Google Pixel

Google is enhancing the way Pixel users handle missed and declined calls. The “Take a Message” feature, which debuted with the Pixel 10 series, is receiving a significant update: the ability to record custom voice greetings. This move shifts the feature from a functional AI tool to a more personalized communication experience.

What is the Take a Message Feature?

Take a Message is an on-device tool within the Phone by Google app designed to manage calls when you cannot answer. Unlike traditional carrier voicemail, Take a Message works directly on your device without requiring Wi-Fi or mobile data. When a call is missed or declined, the feature answers on your behalf, allowing the caller to leave a message.

Key capabilities of the feature include:

• Live Transcripts: Users can view a real-time transcription of what the caller is saying by tapping the “Taking a Message” notification.
• Spam Detection: The system can identify spam among messages left by callers who are not in your contacts list.
• Seamless Integration: Callers hear a greeting and leave a message, which then appears as audio and text in the Home tab of the Phone app.

It’s important to note that if your phone is powered off or out of network coverage, your carrier’s voicemail will handle the call instead of Take a Message.

Adding a Personal Touch: Custom Greetings

Until now, Take a Message relied on a standard, automated greeting: “The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.” To provide a more human experience, Google is rolling out custom greetings, allowing users to record their own voices.

This update is currently appearing in version 216 of the Phone by Google beta and is not yet available in the stable channel. Once active, users can record multiple greetings, each up to one minute in length, using a Material 3 Expressive interface.

How to Set Up Take a Message and Custom Greetings

Activating Take a Message

Before you can personalize your greeting, you must enable the core feature:

1. Open the Phone app.
2. Tap More Settings.
3. Select Take a Message.
4. Toggle the feature On.

Setting Up Custom Greetings (Beta)

If you are using the beta version of the app, you can set up a personal greeting in two ways:

• Via Home Tab: Look for a banner at the top of the Home tab that says, “A personal touch on your missed calls.” Tap this to begin.
• Via Settings: Navigate to Settings > Take a Message > Manage greetings (or Greetings).

To record, tap the microphone icon, speak your message (up to 60 seconds), hit pause and select Save. You can store multiple recordings; the active greeting is marked with a star. To change your active greeting, use the three-dot overflow menu to “Set as default.”

Device and Regional Compatibility

The Take a Message feature is not available globally or on all hardware. According to Google Support, the requirements are as follows:

Supported Devices

• Phones: Pixel 6 and higher.
• Watches: Pixel Watch 2 or higher (must be paired with a Pixel 6 or higher and connected via Bluetooth).

Supported Regions

The feature is currently available in the following countries:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Australia
• Ireland

Key Takeaways

While users can currently only set one default greeting for all callers, the infrastructure for custom recordings opens the door for future updates, such as assigning specific greetings to individual contacts.