Switched to Google Messages to see how I like it. Getting inconsistent sound notifications, and can't figure out why. All notifications allowed (except turned off vibrate) and volume is turned up. I'll get the screen popup notification, but no sound notification. What might cause this? Phone is NOT on DND. Just this morning got one notification to sound, but at least 2 others did not.
OK. Still not 100% sure since haven't gotten a lot of texts today but did successfully get a banking notification after cleaning phone cache, messages cache, restarting phone and blocking notifications from Samsung Messages (although now it looks like Samsung Messages is also no longer seeing / saving any of the texts since it's not my default). I have a package being delivered tomorrow, we'll see if the UPS texts come through OK. Google Messages is going to take some getting used to, there are a number of things about Samsung Messages I liked better (trash, ability to pin contacts to top of message queue). Hopefully it grows on me ... Thanks to all of you for the help, wish I could select all responses as part of the solution!
It is odd that Samsung messages is not seeing the newer texts since you switched defaults. As I said before, I switch back and forth regularly in order to try to help people troubleshoot, and all my messages have been in both apps. As a matter of fact, it irritates me that when I switch to S Messages, all my spam & blocked show right back up in my inbox. So it might take a bit for Samsung Messages to catch up. The messages are actually stored on your carrier's servers, not any individual message reading app, so whichever one you use, your messages should appear in all of them. But you can only have one default at a time.
You can pin conversations to the top in Google Messages. On the inbox screen, long press on the convo(s) you want to pin, and you will see it checked as "selected". On the top of the screen, above the G Messages, will be a bar with a pushpin, download icon and trash. You can select the pin to pin the convo(s) to the top, the trash to delete, or archive the conversation. You can go into the settings (click on your initial/avatar icon) and set the swipe actions (swiping right or left deletes or archives conversations). If you haven't already, turn on the spam protection and all those political fundraising messages will go to spam and help tremendously in keeping your inbox uncluttered. To me, the single best reason to use G Messages is the spam blocker. You can view the spam/blocked folder any time to catch any that might have got through that weren't spam and mark them as such.
Incidentally, archiving messages doesn't actually download them, it just removes them from your view, so you don't accidentally delete something you want to keep. If the conversation is continued at any point from either side of the convo, it comes right back into view. You can also view your archived messages at any time. I do not believe you can retrieve messages from the trash -as I said, they reside on your carrier's servers, so I believe if you delete them from the message inbox, you are also deleting them from the server.
Thank you so much!!! Just tested again, and didn't get sound on first test but did on 2nd (maybe a delay). Also got a sound from package delivery, so hopefully all the cache cleaning and restarting has worked (without a data clear). And I did check my Samsung Messages app and the test texts were received and logged there. So maybe that was just a timing thing yesterday. And now I have conversations pinned, and understand better the archiving. I had used the Samsung delete (and retrieval) in the past, so now need to get used to archiving when I want to clean things up. At least the Archive / Delete can now work the same as I have them in Gmail (and I can still get the warning asking if I'm serious about deleting in case I messed up). I did experience the Spam blocker yesterday, and was pretty impressed.
So thanks again to you and @notforhire who offered suggestions and guidance, and are all part of the solution for me!
