Using RCS with Google Messages on GrapheneOS

I'm looking for advice. I recently installed GrapheneOS on my pixel 9. I was able to get everything working except for RCS. It was stuck on the verification step. It would never complete. I've tried adding my phone number, reinstalling, rebooting, hopping on one foot while reciting the alphabet backwards and in the end I had to revert everything back. I've followed the threads in this discussion but nothing worked. I did notice that ATT has been problematic and you guessed it. I have ATT prepaid. The phone is unlocked so that shouldn't be the issue. I use an ESim. Has anyone gotten RCS to work with ATT? More specifically prepaid ATT? What steps did you follow? Any advice is much appreciated.

So just want to give an update that might help some people. I was helping a family member get RCS to work and even after doing everything in this thread, it still wouldn't turn on even after repeating the steps over and over, and reinstalling everything from scratch.

What did get it to turn on was temporarily giving play services, Google, and messages access to All photos/media/audio instead of just relying on storage scopes. I then redid the steps and it worked immediately. I then restricted it back to storage scopes and uninstalled everything I added and RCS has been going strong ever since. Given this, it might make sense to setup RCS before you move over any sensitive files.

In summary here's what I did:

On the Owner profile:

• install esim and reboot
• install Play Services and Play Store from GrapheneOS App store and allow notifications.
• login to a Google account
• install Google from Play Store
• give play services and Google access to notifications, network, sms, phone, contacts (or contact scopes), and all photos/files all the time.
• Added phone number to automatic phone verification in the Google settings in settings -> Apps -> sandboxed Play Services -> Other
• install Google Messages from Play Store
• give Google Messages notifications, network, sms, phone, contacts (or contact scopes), all photos/media/audio always.
• open Google Messages and let it do initial run through
• close messages
• reopen messages and go to settings to enable RCS.

For some carriers, it might already be working. Otherwise:

• turn off RCS in messages
• reboot phone
• install app opps and shizuku. I installed them from the aurora store.
• follow in app instructions to get them working
• enable read hardware/device identifiers in both Messages and Play Services. (It may already be toggled on for Messages).
• open messages
• turn on RCS

This is when it immediately started working for me.

If it still doesn't work, you may want to try installing Carrier Services from the Play Store and trying this again.

After I got it working, I uninstalled App opps and shizuku, uninstalled the Google app, and restricted the storage permissions for Play Services and Messages to storage scopes.

I also was able to remove the Phone and Contacts permission from play services (not messages) without issues.

I also removed the Automatic Phone number verification and so far no issues after a week.

I should mention that I'm using a logged in Google account for this and installed everything from the Play Store unless I mentioned otherwise.

Novastatic I have never reached out over the phone... (650) 253-0000 is the one I can find. Not sure how far you will get.

Do you have another phone around where you can pop your sim in and got through the process without use shizuku or any adb commands or mod apps

biscuit_tosser_88 Thank you

OfflinePuffin

by deregister, do you mean turn off RCS in Google Messages? I did that.

I ended up getting it working, but I had to completely uninstall play services and Google messages and then redid the setup process from scratch that I outlined in an earlier comment.

Part of me is thinking this happened because I turned off the automatic phone number verification Apps -> Sandboxed Google play -> Google Settings since I thought it wasn't necessary.

After I got RCS working the first time, I thought I could turn it off after getting RCS to work initially. But I guess Google tried to do another phone number verification, it failed, and then RCS stopped working. After redoing everything after reinstalling play services, I received an SMS message saying "Google is verifying the phone# of this device as part of setup. Learn more: [link]"

And then just like that, RCS was enabled again.

If my theory is correct, the only thing that I'm still trying to figure out is why I had to re-install Play Services and messages to get it to do this check since I had already toggled it on earlier with no effect.

I'm also not sure why it needs to be enabled for RCS to work on GrapheneOS, but I never had it toggled on when I was on stock and RCS worked just fine.

When I anable the debug mode with *xyzzy* and check Report RCS Connection State it says

Carrier RCS is not set up
Transport: UNKNOWN
ACS url: [not connected]
PCSCF: NOT_AVAILABLE
Sub Id: 2
SIM Slot: 2
SIM Carrier: Your provider
SIM Nmber: 
Rcs Apk: Bugle
Rcs BOE: Optimized
GmsBinding: Enabled
App StanfBy Bucket: 10
Background Restricted: false
Etouffee provisioned: false

I take it that maybe RCS need's to be enabled by my network carrier?