Before the release of iOS 18, texting between iPhones and Android devices was often frustrating. Although Google Messages adopted RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging in 2019, Apple only integrated RCS into its Messages app in 2024, five years later, with the rollout of iOS 18.

Currently, Android and iPhone users can exchange high-quality images and videos, view read receipts, and see typing indicators with RCS. Before the introduction of cross-platform RCS, messages from Android to iPhone relied on SMS, an outdated technology that didn’t support any of these features.

While Apple’s addition of RCS support to iOS last year was positive, it had notable limitations — messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted (though this may be addressed soon), and message editing wasn’t possible, whether sent from an Android device or an iPhone. However, with a new Google Messages update now slowly rolling out, Android users can finally edit RCS messages sent to an iPhone (via Android Authority).

This means that when you text someone with an iPhone using Google Messages, you’ll soon be able to edit your message, just like you can when messaging other Android users with RCS. As mentioned, the rollout is happening slowly, so you might not have this feature yet. If available, you can long-press on a message and tap the pencil icon to edit and save your message. While this development is great for the over a billion Google Messages users, there are still some limitations.

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iPhone users are left in the dust

Apple still needs to update its Messages app to support this

While all Google Messages users will soon be able to edit messages sent to iPhone users, it unfortunately won’t work the other way around. If you have an iPhone, and text an Android device, you still won’t be able to edit any of the messages you’ve sent. This is because Apple still needs to update its own messaging app to support RCS message edits.

When will Apple update RCS on its Messages app? That’s a great question, and unfortunately, it’s unclear when Apple will do this. Given how long it took for them to adopt RCS initially, it could take a while for Apple to finally update RCS on the iPhone. It would be nice to see Apple update RCS on the iPhone with iOS 26 in the fall, but that might be a long shot.

While Google Messages’ latest RCS update is encouraging, it’s not flawless yet because Apple doesn’t support it. When you edit an RCS message sent to an iPhone in Google Messages, it shows as normal with an edited tag. But when the iPhone user receives the edited message, it appears as a new message with an asterisk at the start. So, if you edit a message sent to an iPhone, the recipient will receive two messages — the original and the edited one — rather than just one marked as edited. Which is frustrating, to put it mildly.

According to Android Authority, this new Google Messages RCS feature works when texting iPhone users with iOS 18.5 and the iOS 26 beta, in both individual chats and group chats. Like editing messages to other Android users, you’ll have a 15-minute window to edit the text after it has been sent. After that, you’ll no longer be able to edit it.

It’s worth noting again that this new Google Messages feature isn’t yet available on every Android device. Google is rolling this out gradually, so it may take a few weeks to appear on your device, if it hasn’t already.

Cross-platform RCS messaging isn’t perfect yet, but at least there’s some meaningful progress with this Google Messages update. Hopefully this update is a wake-up call for Apple to update its RCS implementation sooner rather than later.

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