The biggest update to Apple's iMessage and Messages app in iOS 18 isn't AI emoji, Genmoji, or the ability to text via satellite. Finally, it is an ability. finally Not only can you schedule messages to be sent at a later date and time, but it also supports RCS, the next-generation messaging standard and replacement for SMS, making texting with Android users a lot less painful.
Although buried amidst the AI announcements and other user interface tweaks announced at WWDC 2024, these messaging features will have a significant impact on how people communicate every day.
For years, consumer demand for scheduled messages has led developers to create complicated and cumbersome workarounds, like apps that remind you to send text messages via push notifications, or solutions that only work on jailbroken iPhones. The new iOS has a built-in feature to schedule messages to be sent at a later time.
This feature was only briefly mentioned at WWDC. Apple's press release announced in the same sentence that the Tapbacks upgrade has been expanded to include support for every emoji or sticker in iOS 18. Clearly Apple doesn't think “Send Later” is a feature worth spending a lot of time on. to. But if you're someone who runs a business on your iPhone or just remembers important things to text while lying in bed at 3 a.m., you'll be happy with the new scheduling features. Aside from simply making life easier, such as when you want to send a text message without disturbing someone in a different time zone, Apple's screenshots suggest that you can also use this feature to make sure you don't miss out on a birthday greeting to someone.
But much more importantly, the Messages app supports RCS. RCS is a messaging standard and replacement for SMS that solves many of the frustrations of texting with green bubbles for Android users.
For a long time, Google has urged and campaigned for Apple to adopt a standard that would improve the communication experience between Android and iOS users. The Wall Street Journal published a report on the fight over green bubbles and how essential blue bubbles are to American teenagers. EU regulators ultimately decided that iMessage wasn't popular enough to be forced open and interoperable with other messaging services, but additional scrutiny likely influenced Apple's decision. This is the app that brought iMessage to Android users.
Because Apple has long refused to add support for RCS, texting with Android users has meant no typing indicators or read receipts, broken group chats, and blurry photos and videos. This also meant that messages were not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage.
Unfortunately for Android users, messages sent via RCS are not relieved of the green bubble curse on Apple devices, according to a screenshot on the website showing the feature in action. Instead, the text box indicates in a light gray font that a text with someone supports both “texting + RCS”, but the text itself is still green.
However, the issue of the Messages app providing a broken experience for Apple customers looks set to be resolved, as Apple has said it will support the standard later this year. Of course, this news was only briefly mentioned in Apple's press release, which noted that RCS allows for “richer media and more reliable group messaging compared to SMS and MMS.”
Previous reports said Apple plans to work with GSMA to add end-to-end encryption support to the Universal Profile for RCS, but not E2EE. This may be why there was no mention of encrypted messaging in Apple's RCS announcement.
