Your Emoji Reactions Will Work Well in Texts From iPhone to Android

One of the most painful places for texting between iOS and Android may be over. Even after Apple enabled the RCS protocol in messages between iOS to Android, users still encountered the dreaded 🤮 translation of “this is bad” when sending emoji reactions. Now, we can all react with emoji to our heart’s content, no matter what phone you’re using—as long as RCS actually works.

Apple added the ability to use any emoji as a “Tapback” in Messages with iOS 18, and after we tested it it seems that all those emojis now respond to messages, just as God intended. Gizmodo tested it across several phones, and found that, as long as the message uses RCS, you should be able to receive and send emoji reactions. Works with iPhones running iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2 beta. The Verge first heard the news, but neither Apple nor Google are currently claiming credit.

However, iPhone users still have limited control over whether messages are sent as RCS or SMS. Personally, I run into problems when messages switch randomly between the two, even within the same thread. So, while message consistency has improved significantly, I wouldn’t call this latest change a panacea for all ongoing problems.

Apple has previously made it clear that it only supports the most basic version of RCS in iOS 18. However, emoji reactions only work in RCS version 2.7, not RCS Universal Profile. Either Apple updated the protocol without notifying anyone, or Google quietly made a change on its end. The latter seems more likely, as The Verge revealed that RCS 2.7 should also allow users to edit sent messages—a feature not yet available in the current version.

Google has a history of pursuing that outcome. It previously found the basic Tapback reaction to work properly in 2021 between Messages and iMessages. You would think that Google would be open about this change considering how long it has campaigned with clear, counter-messages for Apple to adopt the RCS protocol.

Let’s not forget that it was not competition between technology companies that led to the RCS messages, but pressure from the European Union. That’s why Apple didn’t make a peep about the change when it announced support for the messaging protocol in June.

RCS between iOS and Android is still not good. Personally, I find that my texts occasionally revert to SMS for no apparent reason. However, since iOS 18, my messages with family members have generally been much better, even if the world remains divided between blue and green bubbles.

Maybe one day, far in the future, we may have truly encrypted messages between iOS and Android. It seems like a dream, however-time, and so is the compatibility of RCS within the ecosystem of the two big phones.