Earlier today, Apple started rolling out iOS 18 to iPhones. Among other things, it offers support for Rich Communications Services (RCS), enabling better messaging between Android and iOS.

RCS is an upgraded version of SMS/MMS, offering many additional features, such as read receipts, typing indicators, message reactions, the ability to send higher-resolution media, and the ability to message over Wi-Fi and mobile data rather than carrier network.

Google started rolling out Rich Communications Services to Android devices in 2019 by upgrading Google Messages with support for the protocol. Apple, on the other hand, is adding support for RCS to iPhones just now, five years after Google made the move.

So, why did Apple take so many years to bring support for RCS to iOS? Well, there’s no concrete info on that. Maybe the company didn’t want to let people enjoy a higher-quality messaging experience with Android users to keep them locked into its ecosystem.

The story continues after the video…

Whatever the case, now, when you open Google Messages on your Android or Galaxy smartphone and try to send a message to an iPhone user, you should see “RCS message” in the text input field and iOS users should see “Text Message · RCS” in the Messages app. With RCS, you should be able to enjoy all the messaging features mentioned above when messaging between Android and iOS.

After updating to iOS 18, iPhone users don’t have to do anything to enable RCS on their phones. Apple has enabled the feature by default. You can find settings for it in Settings » Apps » Messages. Note that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is not available between Android and iOS at the moment. Plus, RCS on iPhone is currently available for limited regions and network carriers.

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