Tech giant Apple is preparing to all but abandon old-school text messaging in some of the biggest updates to its Messages app in years, with iOS 26.4 coming this spring.
The new iOS update reportedly expands Apple’s support for RCS (Rich Communication Services) in an effort to ditch the limitations of traditional SMS.
The update aims to create a modern, cross-platform messaging experience that aligns with modern communications practices.
RCS is considered the long-awaited successor to SMS and MMS in the telecommunications industry, offering features that users have come to expect from modern messaging apps like WhatsApp. It facilitates high-quality media sharing, read receipts, typing indicators, and reliable streaming over Wi-Fi or mobile data.
A notable point for iPhone users is that RCS closes the gap between Apple’s iMessage ecosystem and Android devices, replacing the unreliable “green bubble” SMS experience with a native chat experience.
“End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and we are now pleased to have helped lead a cross-industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile,” Apple said.
This means that encrypted conversations, previously limited to iMessage to iMessage chats, will now be converted to iPhone to Android texts, with privacy protections ensured across all platforms.
iOS 26.4 has been reported to bring a series of functional improvements that were missing in previous RCS implementations. Features like inline replies, message editing, unsending, and richer reactions will certainly improve the user experience and bring Apple’s RCS offering in line with its competitors.
These developments indicate a clear shift in Apple’s approach to cross-platform communications, as internal betas indicate active collaboration with mobile networks to support this transition.
