If you’re using the iOS 18 developer beta, you’ve noticed that your Android friends aren’t the same green bubbles they were before. Carriers have been steadily rolling out Support RCS On the backend, many people using the iPhone have already reported resolving decade-long disputes over Apple agreeing to the messaging protocol’s existence. It’s a beautiful time to be alive!
the The second beta of iOS 18 for developers Features the new RCS capability that was quietly announced in Worldwide Developers Conference 2024Those who brave the developer beta on their daily driver can now send rich messages to their Android siblings. Audio and video sent between devices will no longer be compressed. Group chats will no longer be crashed or broken as friends and family try to find common ground, like who will bring dessert to a gathering. And you’ll see when an iPhone user has left you, dear Android user, on read mode.
9to5Mac Reports suggest that only a handful of US carriers are currently rolling out RCS. Major carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, are the only carriers rolling it out, likely in an effort to help developers targeting iOS 18 apps.
If, for some reason — besides developing an app — you’re running the developer beta of iOS 18, you may see an option to toggle it on in the Settings panel under Settings > Applications > Messages. If it is not there, it means that your current service provider has not turned it on yet. Keep waiting! And maybe return to a stable version of iOS!
What will be interesting to see is whether users will switch back to the default messaging app for cross-platform communication. For example, I preferred my experience with WhatsApp for sharing HD messages with people using an iPhone. But I also think they probably want to go back to Apple Messages to chat with me, their best friend who uses Android, where they already chat with everyone else. We’ll see how it turns out when iOS 18 hits iPhones this fall.
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