Check This iPhone Setting to Make Texting Better for Everyone

Hey, would you mind doing me a favor real quick? If you’re on an iPhone, can you double check that you’ve got RCS chat enabled for me? Thanks, I appreciate it. See, as an Android user, I don’t get to use all the fun iMessage features, but RCS lets us share some of them. The only problem is, iPhones seem to sometimes disable RCS for some chats after an update. Or for no reason at all.

RCS has been around for a while, but since it needs to be supported on both the carrier and device level, it’s taken some time to reach ubiquity. Understandably, you might have seen some chat conversations between iOS and Android users that still default to the older SMS-style texting, and just gone about your day. However, these days, if you’re chatting with your Android friends and you don’t see read receipts, or your pictures and videos are coming through in potato quality, there’s probably an easy fix.

To check if RCS is enabled on your phone:

1. Open the Settings app on your iOS device, then go to Apps.

2. Go to Messages > RCS Messaging

3. Enable the RCS Messaging toggle.

And that’s it! If you text your contacts from multiple devices, it’s also worth checking for RCS support on each of them. It might be a little annoying, but trust me, your Android friends will thank you.