Overview
- End‑to‑end encrypted RCS began a public beta rollout Monday with iOS 26.5 on iPhone and the latest Google Messages on Android, with activation planned to expand over the coming months.
- Chats are marked with a lock icon and an “Encrypted” label, encryption turns on by default, and it will auto‑apply to new and existing RCS threads once both sides meet the requirements.
- Both sender and receiver must use supported carriers, with the U.S. big three (AT&T, T‑Mobile, Verizon) plus many regionals on board and major Canadian providers like Rogers, Bell, and Telus listed by Apple.
- The deployment follows the GSMA’s RCS Universal Profile 3.0 and uses the Messaging Layer Security protocol, a standards‑based approach that lets different apps and carriers interoperate securely.
- This closes a long‑standing gap where iPhone‑Android texts lacked content protection in transit, though metadata and some cloud backups may still be exposed and carrier‑level spam filtering could get harder.