Apple confirms RCS messaging for iPhone in iOS 26.5 – Apple Must

Source Domain: www.applemust.com

Apple has confirmed that RCS messaging will at last come to iPhones with iOS 26.5, which is currently in pre-release testing.

Expected to arrive next week, it means iPhone users will be able to share end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messages with Android users, so long as their carriers support the standard.

Apple began testing E2EE for RCS in the iOS 26.4 beta, allowing encrypted messages between Apple and Android devices, but this was deferred to the current iteration.

Apple has said of this move:

“End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and now we are pleased to have helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile published by the GSMA. We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.”

Apple’s adoption of RCS is a major shift that will “turbo-charge” adoption, bringing it to billions of users.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source