RCS won't allow users to turn off certain things like read receipts. That's problematic for some. I personally like them but I know people who don't who I have unfortunately had to inform that they have to turn off RCS altogether to get rid of them even though there's a setting to turn off read receipts.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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What?
We tested this extensively. On Android we all have the setting to turn off read receipts. It's broken. It does not turn off rear receipts for us. Our phones run the gamut from pixel 9 pro/+ to a pixel 5. To get ready receipts to go away we had to turn off RCS completely.
They’re referring to iOS devices, the Read Receipts toggle on iOS is for iMessage not RCS.
I personally left RCS off until Apple addresses this.
RCS isn't good enough. There is only one app that it works on. Sometimes, no... often it just doesn't work. I'm currently starring at a thread that used to work, but now I can't send messages too. I made it! Everyone had rcs.
Fuck the whole thing.
Half the time it works for me (Android talking to apples), and the other half of the time the encryption, reactions, etc just don't work. It's frustrating.
My VPN kills RCS for some reason. Not a huge issue for single messages, cuz those will default to SMS if RCS fails. But it’s awful for group texts, which don’t automatically fall back to SMS. I simply don’t get group RCS messages that are sent while my VPN is enabled.
I missed a group text that my stepfather was in the ICU, and didn’t see anything until I left work and disabled my VPN. The first thing I saw in the group chat was my mom going “he’s out of surgery now” and I had so many questions.
Google knows this, of course, because all of those messages are now routed through Google. As SMS, they were moving through the carriers, but now they’re going through the carriers and Google.
And since end-to-end encryption in RCS is a proprietary extension, not available to non-Google implementations, all of these new messages are wide open and ready for Google to data mine.
Hooray! Big win for everybody?
Universal Profile 3 has since been released by the GSMA, which includes end to end encryption based on MLS. Apple is expected to use the new version of the standard with the upcoming iOS 19. Google announced their adoption as well.
By the way, routing through Google infrastructure is not a given. This is up to the carrier (albeit sadly many do use Google infrastructure).
TIL google developed the RCS protocol.
Another reason for me to leave it off.
Exactly. And unless RCS with e2ee is made equally available to companies other than Google and is implemented by the carriers, RCS will continue to be a monopolistic data-harvesting grift.
I'm surprised there is not more outrage directed at Google over this.
That's great Google. Since you made such a big stink about Apple supporting RCS that means you will let other apps on Android to use RCS, right?
Right!?!??
Best we can do is silently block your messages if you fail Play Integrity.
Once a month like clockwork -_-
Other Android apps do support RCS. Google doesn't allow other apps to implement the end to end encryption, however.
What other messaging apps support RCS and can be used to replace Messages? How are they doing it? Last I knew Google did not male the RCS API open to app developers.
Well no. How is Google supposed to feed all your text messages into their AI for profit if they allow a choice?
RCS? No.
Whatever they replace RCS with next month? Yes.
I doubt they would be that benevolent.
Don't worry, that will be replaced a couple months later by 3 separate protocols that each cover about half of what you want and combined get to 80% of what you can do today.
... if we are lucky
I've used Pixel phones since they were called Nexus, and it was fun for a minute, but I had too many unexplained issues with RCS and eventually just disabled it. Nowadays, the people I text with most frequently are on Signal. For a variety of reasons, I've shifted to giving people my Google Voice number rather than my "real" number, and Voice doesn't support RCS. So even if I wanted to use RCS, it's not even an option for most conversations.
Well, on my end, idgaf. As long as Google's dick is in the pie, I ain't fucking with it. It's bad enough they're into everything already, I have no interest in adding to it by being limited to their one app that allows rcs.
They need to rebrand RCS as something else. Messages is still synonymous with sms with android users, especially older devices and yes, older users.
Its actually enabled by default in new devices. Problem is, RCS requires internet, and not everyone has unlimited data.
enabled by default
But it's clunky somehow. After having it enabled for years I recently received a new SIM from my carrier and with that new physical SIM it just told me my carrier doesn't support RCS. That's it, no way to configure it or something. Just no, doesn't do. The same carrier that did support it the day before mind you. And it didn't work for a couple of weeks, then when I had already forgotten about it, it enabled itself over night or something.
And possibly for similar reasons I know people where from one day to another the chat falls back to SMS and I have confirmed with them that they are on the same phone and contract etc... we both have no idea why RCS stopped working for them.
Like this, it isn't really mass marketable imo.
Yea, RCS requires both the carrier and Google's systems to inter-operate. Meanwhile, Apple's iMessage only requires Apple to work with themselves.
Google could theoretically build a Google Messages counterpart to iMessage and skip the Carrier as the middleman, but then it wouldn't be interoperable with iPhones since it wouldn't be an "open standard"
Google could theoretically build a Google Messages counterpart to iMessage and skip the Carrier as the middleman, but then it wouldn’t be interoperable with iPhones since it wouldn’t be an “open standard”
Google did that, in 2013. Hangouts was briefly the default SMS client on Android, and it would upgrade conversations from SMS to its protocol when available. It was available for iPhone, but couldn't be an SMS client there.
Rumor has it, carriers whined about it, and Google caved out of fear they would promote Windows Phone devices instead. I think that was a foolish move on Google's part, but I think I'm glad Google doesn't own a dominant messaging platform.
It doesn't need a carrier to be an open standard.
The current standard requires carriers to make it work.
Maybe someone needs to make a new RCS without needing carriers to also do anything. Because if we are relying on carriers to implement something, its likely they'll not get implemented for decades.
Surely Google wouldn’t put an untested, buggy technology directly into production?!?!
I've been using it for years to chat with people on a bunch of different carriers... Seems like carrier incompetence, not Google's fault
I don't think this is a Google thing.
We have working cross-carrrier RCS in Ukraine. No one uses it though.
RCS only works when its connected to the internet. Not everyone has unlimited data, and the 128 kb throttled data after using up the fast data is slow as molasses that sites would fail to load and it's likely a reason why messaging would just revert back to SMS/MMS. (And some people don't even have the "unlimited 128 kb/s" after their fast data runs out)
They need to make RCS not require internet. Or carriers need to stop being greedy and just not count RCS data usage as actual data usage. (The data use is so insignificant it should not cause congestion anyways)
With today's internet, where a normal page is larger than the original Doom, throttled internet is basically no internet.
128 Kb/s? Where do you live?
This is common in the US when you run out of paid high speed data for your cell phone plan. They throttle your speeds to 128kbps so you technically have "unlimited data at 3G speeds" but it's basically barely usable.
Or you can just disable RCS and solve the issue for yourself
Yes. Disabling RCS is the first thing I do on every new phone. Nobody uses text messages in my country anyway.
So then explain why everyone in the rest of the world uses Whatsapp and not SMS. You're telling me they've all had unlimited data for the last 10 years?
In my network circle, only a few 50+ year olds still use SMS. Either everyone is on my Nextcloud instance, Delta Chat or Signal. Or of they have iphones they use imessages between themselves.
The largest carrier in Sweden, Telia, still don't support RCS ):