The nightmare of the green bubble is over, and Apple Messages now supports RCS

If you’re playing the iOS 18 developer beta, you may have noticed that your friends on Android are no longer the same green bubbles they used to be. Carriers have been rolling out steadily Support RCS On the backend, many people using the iPhone have already reported resolving decade-old controversies over Apple’s approval of the messaging protocol. It’s a beautiful time to be alive!

the The second beta of iOS 18 for developers It 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 destroyed 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 indicate that only some US airlines currently operate the RCS. Major companies, 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 > Apps > 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!

It will be interesting to see if users return to the default messaging app for cross-platform communication. For example, I preferred the WhatsApp experience for sharing HD messages with my iPhone-using friends. But I also think they might want to go back to Apple Messages to chat with me, their only best friend who uses Android, where they already talk to everyone. We’ll see how things go when iOS 18 hits iPhones this fall.