Google rolled out its own Rich Communication Services (RCS) on Android as its primary texting platform to Android users. With RCS on Android, you can chat over Wi-Fi or mobile data, send and receive high-resolution photos and videos, and see if people have received your latest messages.
Google is actually making RCS chat, Android’s primary texting platform rolling out availability to any Android user in the US. It supports read receipts, improved group chats, typing indicators, and high-quality images. However, like many other texting apps, like iMessage or Signal, it does not offer end-to-end encryption as an option.
Google RCS chat is based on your phone number, so when you are texting with somebody who also has it, it should just turn on automatically in your chat. To get RCS, you just need to use Android Messages as your default texting app on your Android phone.
Google Messages isn’t the default messaging app on most Android devices. Still, if you download it and enable the Chat Features capability, you can experiment with the RCS protocol when messaging other Messages users.
People can turn on Google RCS chat by opening up the Android Messages app and, when notified, enable the chat features. However, Google is doing a slow rollout and most people in the US will get the new features by the end of the year.
