RCS on GOS in Canada

ohhqo50139

I am unable to get RCS to activate over in Canada with Bell

I have enabled "Allow ICC authentication with device identifiers", enabled phone for google play services, reinstalled Google Messages, rebooted my phone, and disabled my VPN but I'm still stuck on "Connecting..."

After waiting for a while I'm now getting "Your device does not meet security requirements" and status code 4006

Has anyone else been able to get RCS to activate with a Canadian carrier?

Johnnyloans

ohhqo50139

Hello! Many people are having rcs issues with Bell even on stock phones, unfortunately.

Review these 2 comments for help:

ohhqo50139

Johnnyloans thank you for the links, I will try to do what the first one said works

Johnnyloans

ohhqo50139 youre welcome.

This too
https://grapheneos.org/usage#rcs

namecheckobnoxiously

Also in Canada and with Bell. RCS won't activate for me at all and I've tried all the suggestions.

ohhqo50139

namecheckobnoxiously I got a public mobile sim and it activated right away no issues

inthewaves

I've tested RCS with Freedom Mobile, Fizz Mobile, and Bell. Freedom requires the ICC toggle, as it uses TS.43 verification. Fizz doesn't need the toggle as it uses incoming SMS verification.

Bell seems to be broken in general, and it's likely not GrapheneOS-specific. Recently, I've been trying to activate RCS on Bell on a stock Pixel 9. It's not activating there either and stuck on "Connecting" (status code 3000) even after following suggestions from Reddit and the Bell forums . Bell appears to use incoming SMS verification the one time it verified for me on GrapheneOS, so theoretically the ICC toggle isn't needed for Bell. However, Google's servers decide the verification method in the end, so we can never really tell.

I will try to test RCS on Telus and Rogers soon.

namecheckobnoxiously

I removed GOS and went back to stock last night. RCS activated immediately.... I reinstalled GOS today and I'm back to "Connecting"..

inthewaves

namecheckobnoxiously Not sure what's happening then. I have been on stock for a couple of days, and it still hasn't activated on Bell to the point where it's telling me I'm hitting verification limits: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9fad64cf-1c33-4b17-96ae-040516e062e6

Maybe you could try https://messages.google.com/disable-chat too if you just moved from stock to GrapheneOS

namecheckobnoxiously

@"inthewaves"

I have tried that, thank you! When I have the time (hopefully tonight), I'm going to remove my phone # from my google account, create a new account, add the # and see if that does anything.

I'm either stuck on "connecting" or "your device does not meet security requirements". Frustrating!!

inthewaves

namecheckobnoxiously So I found out that Google Play services turns back on Phone number verification after a reboot, and I needed to ensure it was off again before setting up Google Messages.

What I did on the stock OS that finally made RCS activate after it was unable to verify:

Disable RCS in Google Messages settings
Open Google Settings (on GrapheneOS, this is Settings -> Apps -> Sandboxed Google Play -> Google Settings) -> All services -> Phone number verification and toggle it off
Turn on airplane mode to disable cell service
Clear storage in Google Messages (long press on Google Messages app icon -> App info -> Storage and cache)
Restart the phone
Turn on Wi-Fi, but keep airplane mode on to keep cell service disabled
Open Google Settings -> All services -> Phone number verification and toggle it off again
Turn off airplane mode
Open Google Messages, press okay to the dialog
Wait

namecheckobnoxiously

inthewaves

Thank you very much! Will try tonight and report back!
Do you have carrier services installed?

Novalissoide

inthewaves found out that Google Play services turns back on Phone number verification after a reboot, and I needed to ensure it was off again before setting up Google Messages

Thank you for reporting this. Precisely the kind of counter-intuitive solution so hard to discover. 🫡

ejns

inthewaves Wow - I literally just did this and it solved my RCS connection problem! In my case, that toggle doesn't just turn on after a reboot - if I toggle it off and back out of the menu, then go back in and check, it was on again! But that was the only thing I changed after trying everything else.

namecheckobnoxiously

I turned off RCS for 24 hours. When I turned it back on it took about 12 hours, but it is now connected.