{"id":248224,"date":"2026-05-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/18\/ios-26-5-how-to-make-the-most-of-apples-new-iphone-messaging-upgrade\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T07:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:15:14","slug":"ios-26-5-how-to-make-the-most-of-apples-new-iphone-messaging-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/18\/ios-26-5-how-to-make-the-most-of-apples-new-iphone-messaging-upgrade\/","title":{"rendered":"iOS 26.5: How To Make The Most Of Apple\u2019s New iPhone Messaging Upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"

iOS 26.5: How To Make The Most Of Apple\u2019s New iPhone Messaging Upgrade<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/davidphelan\/2026\/05\/18\/ios-265-how-to-make-the-most-of-apples-new-iphone-messaging-upgrade\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-18 07:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.forbes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The padlock shows your messages in this conversation are encrypted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apple<\/p>\n

The latest iPhone update, iOS 26.5, has just been released. The headline feature is the introduction of default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for messages exchanged between iPhones and Android phones for the first time. Here is exactly how it works and how to know when your text conversations are fully protected.<\/p>\n

Forbes<\/span>iPhone 18 To Drop Qualcomm After 15 Years For Apple\u2019s New Custom 5G Modem<\/span>By David Phelan<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

E2EE RCS Messaging In Beta<\/h2>\n

End-to-end encrypted messaging applies to messages coming from, or going to, Android phones in the RCS (Rich Communication Services) protocol. When RCS messages are end-to-end encrypted, they can\u2019t be read while they\u2019re sent between devices.<\/p>\n

This is new and comes about because iOS 26.5 includes RCS 3.0 for the first time. \u201cApple and Google have led a cross-industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to Rich Communication Services (RCS), making the cross-platform messaging format that replaces traditional SMS more secure and private,\u201d Apple said in a Newsroom post.<\/p>\n

Four Things To Note<\/h2>\n

First, messages sent between iPhones \u2014 the ones which show up as blue bubbles, not green \u2014 are automatically encrypted. <\/p>\n

Second, the new messaging is still in beta, and only works if your carrier and the other party\u2019s carrier support it, which may not happen immediately. <\/p>\n

Third, you need to be on iOS 26.5 for E2EE to work on cross-platform messaging. Android users need to be on the latest version of Google Messages. <\/p>\n

And fourth, E2EE is on by default, so you don\u2019t need to switch it on. However, you can verify or toggle the setting by navigating to Settings Messages RCS Messaging.<\/p>\n

How Can You Tell If A Conversation Is Encrypted?<\/h2>\n

Apple could have chosen to turn such conversations into blue bubbles instead of green. It hasn\u2019t, and instead there\u2019s a message at the top of the message chain which reads \u201cText Message RCS\u201d with a picture of a padlock and the word…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iOS 26.5: How To Make The Most Of Apple\u2019s New iPhone Messaging Upgrade https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/davidphelan\/2026\/05\/18\/ios-265-how-to-make-the-most-of-apples-new-iphone-messaging-upgrade\/ Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/6a0a7be3b1c199ac7b6bd654\/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&height=900&width=1600&fit=bounds","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[69,77,81],"class_list":["post-248224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone","tag-ios","tag-ios-26","tag-iphone-18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248227,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248224\/revisions\/248227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}