It's 2026, why doesn't Messages have an "archive" function?

[subjonas]

But Messages and emails are two different things organized by two different identification modes. You may think of them as two similar ways of communication but they aren’t. I would want to be able to archive my messages in the same way I do my emails but I definitely would not want the to merge. Your solution would just get messages lost in a sea of mails and be less organized, not more. I wouldn’t what my letters and phone calls treated the same, I don’t want my emails and messages treated the same either.

I absolutely agree they are different--that's really my point, that they function differently, and if they are changed to be able to function similarly, people will use them similarly and they'll lose their uniqueness. Namely, the text inbox will fall prey to the same issues that many email inboxes fall prey to, which is that they just get more and more filled up with messages that were already read, and messages begin to get lost.
My suggestion of making it easy to forward specific texts to email inboxes wouldn't somehow get all the messages mixed up as you suggest. Text messages still remain in the text message app as always, but a copy of the text can be forwarded to your email inbox as a reminder to take action on it, just like your calendar sends email reminders of events. It would be obvious that it's a text reminder and not an actual email from that person because it would show the sender as "text reminder" or "text forward" or something like that, just like a Google Calendar email notification shows the sender as "Google Calendar". After action is taken, it can be deleted.

 

[subjonas]

What? How does this even make sense? How do you know that it's fine for most people? Have you taken a survey? Being the archive feature exists on every other messaging platform, I would beg to differ on this opinion. Plus, if you don't like using it -- then don't. Leave all the text threads in the inbox.

That's fair, I am assuming it's fine for most people, because text has always been this way for decades and I've only ever heard a couple people complain about it recently. But whether they're fine with it or not is actually irrelevant to my point, because again, not being able to save read text messages in the text message inbox--not being given the choice whether it's desired or not--is the very thing that makes text message special and unique from an email app. If given the choice, (assumption) people will likely want to be able to save read messages and will likely end up filing up their text inboxes just like their email inboxes, so "if you don't like using it, then don't" wouldn't work for them, it's not that simple. Being forced fights against human nature and that's the point. It makes text messages more urgent. If it functions just like an email app, it becomes nonurgent just like an email. And then at that point, why not combine them into one messaging app? A phone number at that point is just acting like another email account. You could even just choose to receive notifications only for that account in Notification Center. But again, it would be losing the power of forced urgency.