Apple added support for the Google-supported Rich Communication Services (RCS) message standard with iOS 18. RCS was created by the cellular industry to add advanced media and other features to messaging that would work on all operating systems. Google adopted RCS in Android about five years ago and it is available for most phones that can run Android 5 (Lollipop, 2014) or later. The standard requires operator upgrades, and almost all have completed them.
Enabling RCS for your iPhone allows Android users to send and receive messaging information or formatting that was previously limited to Android to Android (via RCS) or Apple to Apple (via iMessage). This includes read receipts that indicate when the recipient viewed a message (if enabled), emoji tapbacks, extremely long messages, and audio messages. (iMessages appear as blue bubbles in a Messages conversation and only work with people using Apple hardware. SMS, MMS, and RCS messages appear as green bubbles.)
You can enable or disable RCS on iPhone 18 via Settings > Applications > Messages > RCS Messaging. Disabling RCS does not prevent you from communicating with Android users; instead, your iPhone reverts to interacting with them via SMS or MMS.
Turn RCS on or off via Settings > Apps > Messages.
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The Apple version of RCS does not yet support group texting. It also lacks the end-to-end encryption available with the supported Android-to-Android RCS and is mandatory for iMessage. Messages from your iPhone to Android are sent as if they were traveling over a secure web connection: they are encrypted and decrypted by servers at each end, not just on your devices and those of the recipients. An industry effort is underway to create an encryption standard that Apple could use.
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