Using RCS with Google Messages on GrapheneOS

connor112case

couch5528 I love GOS team ❤️‍🔥

bouncy3915

I installed the latest stable update this morning. It said connected and I couldn't send any RCS messages. I turned RCS off then back on and it is now back to status code 3000 / 4006 cycle.

GrapheneOS

bouncy3915 That's not the upcoming release that's being referred to and not the most recent public release either since that's still in Alpha and Beta.

bouncy3915

GrapheneOS Thanks for the info. My fault for not understanding the upcoming updates. Please disregard my comment.

I appreciate all the hard work you do!

connor112case

GrapheneOS To clarify further does that mean the RCS patch is in alpha? Cheers to the team regardless!

Lilac6044

connor112case Looks to be the case.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/26874-grapheneos-version-2025092700-released/10

GrapheneOS

Official support for Google Messages RCS support has been implemented in the latest release. The thread for that is https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/26874-grapheneos-version-2025092700-released. Note that activation attempts have throttling and you may need to wait a while if you've had it repeatedly trying to activate. Make sure to follow the instructions in the release notes: clear app data for Google Messages or reinstall it, grant the Phone permission to Play services, grant the minimum requested permissions to Google Messages (you can use Contact Scopes instead of Contacts, etc.) and then enable Google Messages as the SMS/MMS/RCS app prior to launching it. If you launch it before doing that, you need to clear app data or reinstall it and start over.

DirtyDan

GrapheneOS

Using this requires granting the Phone permission to Play services to provide carrier information to it, granting the required permissions to Google Messages and then setting Google Messages as the current carrier messaging app. Setting an app as the carrier messaging app provides it with device identifier access which is documented in our FAQ. However, Google Messages is a special case where part of the implementation is in Play services. We've dealt with this by special casing the device identifier permission check to detect when the user has granted this access to the official Google Messages app which then also provides the official Play services app with the same access. This doesn't provide any extra access in practice since Google Messages shares the information with Play services.

If I am understanding this correctly, does this mean that we no longer need to manually grant device identifiers to play services through adb anymore to get RCS to work?

Also, are you aware if any of these updates now allows RCS to work on other profiles besides the Owner?

Thanks for this huge update!

cb474

GrapheneOS Make sure to follow the instructions in the release notes: clear app data for Google Messages or reinstall it, grant the Phone permission to Play services, grant the minimum requested permissions to Google Messages (you can use Contact Scopes instead of Contacts, etc.) and then enable Google Messages as the SMS/MMS/RCS app prior to launching it. If you launch it before doing that, you need to clear app data or reinstall it and start over.

These instructions say to clear app data for Google messages or reinstall it. Does uninstallling and reinstalling clear app data? Most people seem to have chose to reinstall, rather than just clear app data. Has anyone gotten it working just by clearing app data?

Also, when I clear app data, Messages still remains the default messaging app. So do I need to do something or just leave it as is?

Does anyone think the call log permission in important? I saw in some information Google provides about the call log permission that it is used for phone number verification. Although I never granted that permission to Google Play services and my number shows as verified. I did grant this permission to Messages.

GrapheneOS

Some users say Carrier Services needs to be installed for it to work for them which we haven't confirmed. There may be some other required steps in some cases such as granting the SMS permission to Play services. It is working for many people now though.

Evoke0512

DirtyDan I too am wondering the same, haven't been able to find any answer yet on this.

lcalamar

DirtyDan I changed my setting to 'deny' from 'allow' - since 'allow' didn't fix the issue and deny is the default... I prefer to start from an 'unchanged' state.. I've completely uninstalled messages and will try again tomorrow when things die down a bit.

$ adb shell appops set com.google.android.gms READ_DEVICE_IDENTIFIERS deny

connor112case

Considering it's still an alpha build I will probably wait for it to go official. I would however like for some of the other users here to report back to us and let us know if functionality is actually stable. I'm excited 😬🎉

siculus

I'm still stuck in 3000 hell.

DoctorB0NG

siculus same here. my phone is also still stuck in "Verification in progress" on https://myaccount.google.com/phone

KrypticFox

Mine now says connected but fails to send RCS messages

DoctorB0NG

I'm suspecting my issue is due to Play Services crashing when toggling on Verify Phone Number. I've reported the issue here and attached a log: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6221

SkyHawkNW

I'm also still having issues, I updated GOS, followed the instructions and uninstalled/reinstalled the messages app, double-checked permissions, set it as my messaging app, and then opened it and after a while "Setting-up", it told me that my device was "Unsupported" I have tried retrying the steps from the start for the same result... Before trying this fix it always said "Connected" even though RMS wasn't working. Another weird thing, this morning before updating or trying anything had a brief window of like an hour where I received a backlog of messages and could send a couple.

CraigoMyEggo

SkyHawkNW I also received a surge of backlogged messages, but only after switching to the alpha. Then it quit working sometime within the hour after that. First time RCS has worked for me since Sept. 10.

ghost_division

After installing the update 2025092700, I uninstalled the messages app, reinstalled it, gave it the permissions I am fine with it having, saw I already had the phone permission given to Google Play Services, set Google Messaging as the SMS app, then launched it and let it sit there for a little bit

Still stuck on 3000 "Please wait, activation is ongoing" after the first automatic retry

As of writing this it just changed to a "Trouble connecting, Awaiting retry..." from previously saying "Connecting..."

I should probably note I am running the beta channel of Google Messages

lcalamar

ghost_division Yeah - I just decided to uninstall messages app - and will wait until tomorrow to try again.

Please clarify exactly where/how you provided the proper permissions?

... "saw I already had the phone permission given to Google Play Services..."
..... I went into app permissions for Google Play Services (from the GOS App Store), and verified that 'phone' has permissions (is that what you are referring to?)
... what exact permissions are you giving for Google Messages (can't look right now as I have not re-installed it yet)

GrapheneOS

If you're currently heavily rate limited due to previous failures, you simply need to wait.

quaff

GrapheneOS I'm currently on 20250927 alpha, did all the necessary steps for RCS (give play services Phone permission, clear data of Messages app, etc). I'm seeing status code 4006. Will the rate limit issues still throw this status code?

EndoPlant

quaff Same situation here. Tried several times following the instructions and it always gives 4006 eventually.

connor112case

quaff according to discord this is still an ongoing issue. Hopefully, they can work something out during this beta shakedown.

quaff

quaff interesting, I just updated to 2025092701, and now I'm seeing my RCS is connected. None of my chats are actually in RCS tho, but this is progress! Maybe a little more time and the connection will sort itself out 🙏

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