Google and Apple Start Testing Encrypted RCS Messaging Together

Apple began testing encrypted RCS messages on iOS last week with the release of iOS 26.4 beta. At the time of that release, they were only testing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) between Apple devices, but we sort of hoped that they would quickly expand that test to include Android. This week, they’ve apparently done just that.

Both Apple and Google appear to have reached out to 9to5Google with a brief statement on a test of RCS encryption between Android and iOS users. They mentioned that this is simply a beta test of this feature and a big next step it getting E2EE RCS messaging between the two platforms.

If you’d like to test this, you would need an iPhone running iOS 26.4 beta 2, as well as an Android phone with Google Messages. You’ll need to toggle on RCS “End-to-End Encryption (Beta)” in the iPhone’s RCS settings area if you haven’t. There’s also a chance that it is turned on automatically once you update to this latest beta, as it was on my own iPhone.

On the Android side of things, you shouldn’t need to do anything other than run the latest Google Messages beta build, which you can sign-up for here.

// 9to5Google