Android and iPhone users can finally send each other end-to-end encrypted text messages. On Monday, end-to-end encrypted messaging began rolling out in beta for iPhone and Android users with the latest software.
End-to-end encrypted (e2ee) messaging is a key privacy feature that significantly reduces vulnerability to surveillance from hackers, governments, or platform creators. This encryption ensures that messages sent between devices remain private, preventing interception. Despite iMessage offering encryption since its 2011 launch and Android enabling e2ee among users since 2021, cross-platform encryption had not been available until now.
Historically, iOS and Android users faced communication challenges—Android users couldn’t use Apple’s proprietary iMessage, and Apple had not supported RCS messaging, an update to old SMS texting, since 2020. RCS, the industry-standard texting protocol, includes features like typing indicators, read receipts, emoji reactions, longer message lengths, and encryption. Apple finally supported RCS in 2023 under regulatory pressure.
Google urged Apple to adopt RCS for more seamless device communication, highlighting issues like the “green bubble stigma,” referring to the distinction in message appearances between iPhone and Android. Without Apple supporting RCS, iPhone users experienced disrupted group chats and poor-quality multimedia sharing from Android users. Apple’s new e2ee support on RCS helps bridge the gap between green and blue bubbles.
End-to-end encrypted RCS messaging is currently rolling out in beta, and might not be available to all users yet. Encrypted conversations between Google and Apple devices will display a lock icon to show the chat is secure.