RCS

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We’re officially just over a week away from WWDC 2025. While we expect big design enhancements and much-needed Apple Intelligence improvements to iOS, Apple has the opportunity to do something it’s quite good at: flexing its privacy prowess.

Apple’s Messages app got some big upgrades in iOS 18, but one with the biggest potential impact—RCS support—has had a slow rollout among some carriers. Fortunately in iOS 18.4, Messages is bringing the feature to a lot of new users, including those on Google Fi, Mint Mobile, and more.

Yesterday, Apple announced that it will be supporting RCS Universal Profile 3.0 in “future software updates.” While this does have one large benefit of bringing end-to-end encryption to iPhone users using RCS, it has a number of other benefits that aren’t yet being mentioned.

In collaboration with the GSM Association, Apple today announced it will add support for end-to-end encryption for RCS messages. This brings RCS much closer to iMessage in terms of security standards.

The new RCS Universal Profile 3.0 including end-to-encryption was only just released today, so it’s not clear exactly when this support will ship to customers. Apple said it helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-encryption to the RCS Universal Profile …

iOS 18.4 is currently in beta testing, and with the recent beta 2 debut, it brought long-awaited RCS messaging support to not only Google Fi users, but also customers of some other big US carrier holdouts: Mint Mobile, Boost Mobile, and more. Here are the details.

With iOS 18, Apple introduced support for RCS messaging, a new protocol that enhances the texting experience between iPhone and Android users. Unlike SMS, you can see read/delivered receipts, send larger files, and have typing indicators, features that were previously missing. At first, only the big three carriers supported RCS messaging. Since then, a lot more have joined in on the fun.

With iOS 18, Apple introduced support for RCS messaging, a new protocol that enhances the texting experience between iPhone and Android users. Unlike SMS, you can see read/delivered receipts, send larger files, and have typing indicators, features that were previously missing. At first, only the big three carriers supported RCS messaging. Since then, a lot more have joined in on the fun.

Apple held out for a long time on switching from text messaging to RCS (rich communication services), but finally announced that it would be doing so as part of iOS 18. The move brings many iMessage-like features to text messages between iPhone and Android users.

Mobile carriers also need to support the switch, and UK telco Three has just texted customers to announce that it will be doing so from next month …

Apple has a packed iOS 18.1 update coming next week, with Apple Intelligence and a whole lot more. But despite months of beta testing, there’s one new feature we just learned about today: iOS 18.1 upgrades business messaging to include RCS support.

With iOS 18, Apple has finally introduced support for Rich Communications Services, or RCS, to the iPhone. As we’ve been covering since the first betas, the rollout depends on the carriers working with Apple to enable RCS for their customers. Soon, RCS will be available to iPhone users in China as well.

iOS 18 will launch in the coming weeks with major improvements like Apple Intelligence, new customization tools, and more. But one of the biggest changes is coming with Messages: RCS support. RCS will make messaging between iPhones and Androids work better than ever. Here’s what that means for you.

As we reported last month, the second beta of iOS 18 released to developers has finally enabled RCS messaging support on the iPhone – but only for some US mobile carriers. Now with iOS 18 beta 3, which was released on Monday, Apple is enabling RCS for more carriers around the world.

As we reported yesterday, Apple has been getting ready to roll out RCS support on the iPhone with iOS 18. However, doing so also requires mobile carriers to work on an update on their part – something that some US carriers have already done. Now it seems that these carriers have flipped the switch and are now enabling RCS for users running the latest iOS 18 beta.

As announced by Apple at WWDC 2024, iOS 18 officially brings support for RCS – or Rich Communication Services – to the iPhone. However, as we previously reported, the feature doesn’t seem to be available to beta users. Unfortunately, iOS 18 beta users might have to wait a bit longer before they can enable RCS on their iPhone.

In November, Apple surprised us all when it announced that RCS support would come to the iPhone sometime this year. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent way too much time since then thinking about why Apple reversed course.

Writing at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has an explanation: China.

Earlier today, Apple announced its plans to bring RCS support to the iPhone in 2024. Since I published my story on the news this morning, there’s one thing everyone wants to know: is the blue bubbles vs green bubbles debate coming to an end?

I’m happy to say I now have an official answer: nope. RCS will use green bubbles just like SMS.