The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
Encryption was never part of the RCS standard, and Google has been gatekeeping the encryption solution that they’ve been using… which is why there aren’t a lot of E2EE RCS clients floating around.
Google finally conceded several months ago, and now encryption will be part of RCS and managed by an independent working group that Google, Apple, and others can contribute to.
Phase 1 of RCS is about implementing the unencrypted foundation of the protocol. Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.