I don’t know if you were only addressing the OP - and my apologies if you were - but I thought that I would chime in with my 2 cents worth of opinion.
While customizing themes is a nice feature, it hasn’t been one of the primary reasons I have preferred Textra over Google Messages. The top 5 reasons why I have used Textra as my primary messaging app and why I haven’t cared for Google Messages are, unlike Textra, with Google Messages you:
- Can’t adjust font size. In my opinion, Google Messages text is too small. Not everyone shares the same vision, some people have vision disorders and users should be able to adjust the text to their eyesight.
- Can’t adjust colours. Once again, individuals see and react to colour differently. There are plenty of colourblind males – about 8% of the population – along with a lesser amount of females. You may be able to see a certain tone of blue better than I can. Let the user decide what colours work best for their individual eyesight.
- Can’t copy and paste as much or as little of a text as you want. With Google Messages, you must copy a whole text message and then delete text that you didn’t really want in the copy and paste. This is just silly as you can copy and paste as much or as little text as you want in most other apps, including many of Google’s apps.
- Can’t set individual vibration patterns for each contact. You are in a meeting and you need to hear from and respond to one contact as soon as possible. What do you do? An individual vibration pattern lets you decide whether a text is important enough to read and/or answer in an environment where you want or need to silence your phone notifications and only respond to that one important message.
- Can’t schedule messages or add a delay to messages. These are handy features. “Hey, it’s 4AM and I don’t want to wake Mary, but want to send a text while I am thinking about it.” I just schedule the text for an 8AM delivery.
While these are the top 5 reasons, there are more Textra features which make it an attractive alternative to Google Messages.