You don’t have to turn on RCS to message with Android users

Apple added support for the Google-supported RCS (Rich Communication Services) message standard with iOS 18. RCS was created by the cellular industry to add advanced media and other features to messaging that would work across operating systems. Google adopted RCS in Android about five years ago, and it’s available for most phones that can run Android 5 (Lollipop, 2014) or later. The standard requires carrier upgrades, and nearly all have made them.

Turning on RCS for your iPhone lets Android users send and receive messaging information or formatting that previously was limited to Android-to-Android (via RCS) or Apple-to-Apple (via iMessage). This includes read receipts that show when the recipient has viewed a message (if they have that option enabled), emoji tapbacks, extremely long messages, and audio messages. (iMessages appear as blue bubbles in a Messages conversation and only work among people using Apple hardware. SMS, MMS, and RCS messages appear as green bubbles.)

You can enable or disable RCS in iPhone 18 via Settings > Apps > Messages > RCS Messaging. Disabling RCS doesn’t prevent you from communicating with Android users; instead, your iPhone reverts to interactions with them via SMS or MMS.

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Apple’s version of RCS doesn’t yet support group texting. It also lacks the end-to-end encryption available with supported Android-to-Android RCS and is mandatory for iMessage. Your iPhone to Android messages are sent as if they passed over a secure web connection: they are encrypted and decrypted by servers on either end instead of only on your devices and that of recipients. An industry effort is underway to create an encryption standard that Apple would be able to use.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by a Macworld reader.

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