Using RCS with Google Messages on GrapheneOS

wizoatk

I'm seeing 202508027_00_RC00 as latest on Play Store. I don't suppose that would make any difference?

I'm over my head here as I don't use RCS. So feel free to ignore.

BobTheRobot

Created an account to add my name here. I contacted my cell provider and they can confirm there are no issues on their end. Same issue.

Novastatic

Novastatic Welp, seems I borked it even more as RCS stopped working today. I tried to re-verify it and do the whole process again, but now it's stating "RCS isn't available for this device"...

Might have to wait a day or two to get it working again...

I did update my messages after RCS worked a few days ago, so that might be the reason.

Predefine8310

Novastatic Same here. Strangely if I use an old version of the app (which worked for me before), I get 'rcs not available for your device', but if I update to a newer version i get stuck on 'verifying your phone number'.

GrapheneOS

Many people started reporting it stopped working on August 31st to September 2nd. There hadn't been a GrapheneOS update since 2025081400 which was released to Alpha on August 14th and reached Stable in under a day. Blaming an OS update doesn't make sense. It appears to stop working for many people after rebooting and updating is one of the major reasons people reboot.

It appears they've been increasing the strictness of their verification process. For one thing, it may require having Google Play signed into a Google account similar to how Play Integrity API requires that for basic integrity now. There are still people who have it working. It's possible it stopped working for many people is tied to carrier-specific issues involving carriers hosting RCS.

There will be more OS releases with further backports from Android 16 QPR1. No issues were reported with the existing releases during Alpha and Beta testing including no one having issues with RCS. The reports about RCS no longer working for a growing number of people started before recent OS updates.

new-graphene-user

GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS It appears they've been increasing the strictness of their verification process. For one thing, it may require having Google Play signed into a Google account similar to how Play Integrity API requires that for basic integrity now. There are still people who have it working. It's possible it stopped working for many people is tied to carrier-specific issues involving carriers hosting RCS.

Thanks for chiming in, appreciate a reply from the mods/programmers. What do you suggest as a work around to have this re-enabled? I have multiple group chats that are unavailable to me because RCS is "broken" (still stuck in trying to verify)

I've pretty much given the app free reign and its still stuck.

Thanks again

GrapheneOS

Scroll up the thread and it will become clear that it was not caused by 2025090800. That was released to the Stable channel on September 9th. People started blaming that OS update today but most of the recent posts are from before it. 2025090800 had no changes to the OS at all, only firmware updates, and none at all related to cellular. This is the only change in the release:

backport the rest of the Android 16 QPR1 Pixel firmware (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GNSS, UWB, NFC, secure element, GPU, AOC, TPU and GXP)

Any issues people have were not caused by 2025090800. We know for a fact that didn't cause any RCS issues. 2025090600 provided cellular radio and kernel updates which could have caused issues but there were no reports of any regressions in Alpha, Beta or after it went for Stable for days. It's possible verification works for fewer people since that update and no one noticed until now but that's an earlier update than 2025090800 which is definitely unrelated. There will be additional Android 16 QPR1 backports including more cellular related ones coming today and even more in the next few days. Perhaps that will improve compatibility of Google Messages verification for some users. The reason it allows RCS for some people but not others is unknown. It may have to do with carriers, VPNs, being logged into a Google account, etc. Many people have issues with RCS on the stock OS for similar reasons so it's unsurprising their fragile verification assuming that Google Meesages and Play services have privileged access, etc. has more issues for GrapheneOS users.

RCS is essentially a Google messaging standard and service. It's not truly a cross-platform or open standard. It would be nice to have an open source app for using it but it's likely not truly fully open to that and it would depend on someone's carrier.

cb474

GrapheneOS I defintely hear what you're saying, but I'm on Messages 20250813_00_RC02, installed from Google Play. I assume that means that update came on August 13. I have had many reboots since them without a problem. There were two recent updates of Graphene, since the beginning of September. After the first once, RCS still worked for me. But after the Graphene update I got a couple days ago, RCS stopped working. It was working this Monday, but stopped working yesterday, September 9. So my experience doesn't seem to fit what you're describing.

I'm not blaming Graphene. Obviously ultimately the problem is, as you say, that RCS is not an open standard and it requires Google Messages, along with all of Google's onerous verification procedures. But that does not mean that an OS update can't break things for some people, for whatever complex reasons.

I do think that given how important RCS is to a lot of people, it would be nice if Graphene tried to work on ways to make it functional, in the same way that Graphene tries to keep Google Play working and provides a compatibility layer for that, even though Google Play is a third party app and service. I wouldn't suggest this about anything else, but for better or worse, RCS is the future of stanadard carrier supported messaging, and it really out to work on any OS, even if that means dealing with Google's crap. I don't know if technically it is possible for Graphene developers to do this. And maybe they don't want to. But it would be nice to put some focus on it, if possible.

At some point, no matter how much this is Google's fault, if RCS works on every phone, including iPhones, and is a de facto (albeit proprietary) standard, of course we're not there yet, but phones with GrapheneOS are the only ones where RCS doesn't work, that seems like a problem for GrapheneOS as a viable alternative. It could get to be a situation where having RCS not work would be tantamount to having SMS not work (especially if someday they phase out SMS). That would obviously be a non-starter for almost everyone.

GrapheneOS

new-graphene-user Their service and verification requirements aren't under our control. It's essentially a Google service even though carriers are expected to provide the low-level communication protocol. We don't know how they verify users.

cb474

RCS stopped working for me yesterday. I think this was due to a GrapheneOS update and not a Google Messages update. I don't quite remember when the last Messages update was, but Graphene just updated a day or two ago. I'm on Messages version 20250813_00_RC02, installed from Google Play.

RCS has always worked without a problem for me since I first installed Graphene almost two years ago. When I installed Graphene around the begining of 2024, I enabled RCS in Messages and it connected almost immediately. Never an issue until now.

But, strangely, when I installed Graphene on my partner's phone a few months ago (we both are using the Pixel 8--so they are identical phones--except mine has more storage), I could never get RCS to work. Maybe my phone worked because I had enabled RCS on much earlier iterations of Messages and Graphene and once it was enabled it was fine? It's not heartening that recent updates to Graphene and/or Messages are breaking RCS on phones where it was working and already went through the verification procedure.

That aside, I'm sure what I should do now. In Messages RCS is enabled and it says "connected," but if I try to send an image, it just gets stuck and never sends. If I send a text, it immediable switches to SMS and only then switches to SMS on the phone or my recipient.

A major concern I have is: Should I assume that people with whom I was already havin RCS chats may send me messages that I don't receive. In other words, their phones still see me as connected to RCS and continues sending messages as RCS, but I can't receive them and don't realize I'm not getting them? In a different thread someone said they didn't get some messages, once RCS stopped working. And it seems like not until I send someone a message, does the chat switch/revert to SMS.

If it's possible that I'm not getting messages, should I disable RCS in the Messages settings? I'm hesitant to do that, only to discover I can never connect again. I'm okay waiting to see if future updates fix this. But if leaving RCS enabled means I'm not getting messages, that's obviously a problem.

FJT2

My carrier is T-Mobile in the US
I am running a Pixel 6a with sandboxed google play and most of the permissions that let me use it like any other android phone. I’m a much more average user. I have a lot of google apps installed and logged in with my google account (Yes im trying to move off of it but getting graphene OS and using it like a normal human being is the first step and an important one). I have Google messages installed and could text in RCS DM and RCS group chats without issue since it first became an option in google messages like a year or so ago.

On the evening of September 3rd my RCS chats switched to SMS and I didn’t think much of it because sometimes RCS doesn’t work from time to time when at remote cell towers, whatever.

The next day I realized it was a deeper issue as I could not send RCS group chat texts. The RCS toggle in Google Messages was ON but the connection status would read "setting up” and separately “trying to verify your phone number". Toggling off and on again didn’t work and neither did turning my phone off and on again :(... I first ran through some stuff listed in the major thread:
OG Post: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20980-if-rcs-just-broke-on-you-do-this/15

jeffcodes https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/507

Novastatic https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/571

DirtyDan https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/609

DirtyDan https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/621

nowcircumscribeyahoo https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/672

whoiswes https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/741

cb474 https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/771

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24090-rcs-stuck-on-setting-up

Phone number verification was already enabled (Settings -> Apps -> Sandboxed Google Play -> Google Settings -> All Services -> Phone number verification)
myaccount.google.com/phone showed my phone number validated and my active devices detected. Toggling that on and off gave a weird error message but I didn’t think much of it because after reloading the page and toggling multiple times, it seemed to stay in the position I had last toggled.

I feel i've followed @DirtyDan 's guide(s), and the variations other users have created, to the T, however I am simply back to square 1, stuck with RCS toggled on (i could turn it off) and status reading: Setting up... trying to verify your device.

I think this matches with what

Judgeadam

said, and this is simply a google/carrier issue. so sad. Thanks to the people who I'm reaplying to and to others who have documented their success and failures.

RyNo

Just as another datapoint, RCS broke for me sometime yesterday as well; RCS showed as "Connected" in Google Messages, but can't send or receive. Pixel 9A on T-Mobile. Rebooting had no effect. Disabling and re-enabling RCS had no effect. There was an update available for Google Messages, but installing it had no effect. Deleting the app's data had the effect of the RCS status changing to "Setting up..." / "Trying to verify your phone number".

Syberkonda

cb474 echoing what you're saying here about making Google-independent RCS implementation a priority. Graphene obviously doesn't have the resources to do this, but we badly need an open source implementation of RCS if RCS is going to be a serious replacement for SMS. Even if it doesn't fully replace SMS, RCS will become the de facto standard and I for one can attest to the fact that any person living in the real world would have some serious difficulty being able to communicate without it. RCS breaking has broken some work chats for me and Google for some reason decided it was a good idea to not allow for MMS fallback; now, my work chats have 30 days left before they are deleted.

I wonder if this is something FUTO can give a grant to work on or help get some contributors on such a project...

GrapheneOS

cb474 It was not broken by the 2025090800 update. The last changes which could have impacted it were in 2025090600.

Syberkonda

One interesting tidbit: on the most current version of messages (286376063), attempting to use "Report RCS Connection State" in the debug menu causes the app to crash. In 242499063, I can see that "Carrier RCS is not set up" and that the ACS URL shows "not connected."

Years ago, there was a way to add an ACS URL to force messages to connect to google's servers and enable RCS, but the corresponding flag is no longer available and can't be set in Activity Launcher. I wonder if there's an alternative way to set the ACS URL to force a connection.

cb474

Syberkonda Yeah, the way I discovered RCS wasn't working is because an image wouldn't send and Messages wasn't falling back to MMS. I had to send a text first, so that it switched the thread to SMS and only then could I send an image.

GrapheneOS

Syberkonda We won't include an app not under a true open source license.

de0u

Syberkonda echoing what you're saying here about making Google-independent RCS implementation a priority. Graphene obviously doesn't have the resources to do this, but we badly need an open source implementation of RCS if RCS is going to be a serious replacement for SMS.

It's not yet clear, but that might be impossible. There isn't an open-source implementation of iMessage, or WhatsApp, because those are designed to be closed systems. If Google and carriers decide to deploy enough "verification" that RCS clients are running their code on their OS, then this won't be solvable. Or perhaps it will be possible to shim or spoof enough to make it work. Right now it's not known.

Lilac6044

More a curiosity point, are most of you from the US? Only reason I am asking is that I know no one who uses SMS for anything except for stuff like 2FA. Just wondering if SMS is more common outside of the country in Europe I belong to.

5rlyn

Lilac6044 when I was stationed in Italy, the cell phone plans we could buy only had a certain amount of minutes and messages attached to them, but had unlimited data. Whatsapp was just starting to come on the scene around that time, so a lot of people used that to circumvent. In the US, it's the opposite. Very rare to see a phone plan that doesn't include unlimited text and calling, but there are many out there (especially lower cost MNVOs) that have a monthly limit to data plans.

It seems like there's a lot of RCS trouble to go around, just horrible timing in the sense that it all kicked off at the same time as a GrapheneOS update.

cvsickle

GrapheneOS Is it possible something in the 20250906 update broke it, but the symptoms only showed up on a subsequent reboot?

cb474

GrapheneOS As I said in my post, I'm using 20250813_00_RC02. That's the latest version supplied to me by Google Play. I'm not in the beta program. RCS was working fine for me, until this Tuesday, 09/09/2025. The only obvious change at that time was an update from GrapheneOS. Rebooting was not the issue, because I've had many reboots since 08/13/2025 when my version of Messages was released. I don't know what is causing the problem with RCS, but my experience is not consistent with the details you have provided.

eatinggrumble84 I'm on version 20250813_00_RC02 (286630063). I'm having the experience you describe, where RCS shows connected, but everything is falling back to SMS now. I do not have a "Profile" section appearing in the Messages' settings. RCS stopped working for me two days ago, 09/09/2025. I have never had a problem in almost two years on Graphene, until now.

new-graphene-user

jeffcodes

I checked this morning after doing a few things like enable all permissions, etc. The damn thing is now doing the same as yours, goes from connecting/registering to failed to register trying again.

And just stays there. I dont want to go back to spyware android but this is aggravating, ugh.

eatinggrumble84

I do believe that some of this is probably due to Google Messages server side updates. I started having issues with RCS about a week and a half ago and was able to fix it by downgrading to the previous version 242499063. My RCS was able to reconnect and was working fine for a few days at that point up until about two or three days ago. I started having issues that some people are reporting now where it says RCS is connected, but messages are just automatically sending as SMS. It was that this time that I had also noticed there was some sort of new "Profile" settings in Google Messages underneath RCS that was not previously there, and my app version has remained on the previous 242499063. In trying to troubleshoot the issue I disabled RCS and that Profile Setting disappeared. I have not been able to get RCS to reconnect, and it's been stuck trying to verify.
So I'm assuming that they've been making server side updates that can affect people's RCS connections even if they're remaining on the old versions of messages.

« Previous Page Next Page »