After many years of anticipation, Apple finally added support for RCS in iOS 18 in late 2024, and it’s been there ever since. There has been a rather significant caveat – these RCS messages you can send between an iPhone and an Android phone are not end-to-end encrypted.
That changes today, with the rollout of iOS 26.5. This version comes with support for end-to-end encryption for RCS. Interoperability with Android is provided by Google, which has also announced that Android device users with the latest version of Google Messages can send end-to-end encrypted messages to people with iPhones on iOS 26.5.
This feature is supported by Apple for specific carriers only, here’s the full list. In case you didn’t know, end-to-end encryption means your messages can’t be read while they’re sent between devices. You will know that your conversation is end-to-end encrypted when you see a new lock icon in your RCS chats. Encryption will be turned on by default for new chats and will be automatically enabled for existing chats over time.