Posted to Reddit, this trick to enable RCS in the Android Messages app appears reliant on Google’s implementation. In June, the company announced that it would offer to handle RCS rollout for individual carriers. So far, this plan was only ever tried in the United Kingdom and France.
The full steps are below, and there are countless reportsof this working in the U.S. (on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) and around the world between carriers. An app that can see Android activities is the only requirement today:
Open Activity Launcher
Tap ‘Recent Activities,’ and in the menu choose ‘All Activities.’
Look for ‘Android Messages.’
Tap it, then scroll until you find ‘Set RCS Flags’ (com.google.android.apps.messaging.ui.appsettings.rcs.overrides.OverrideFlagsActivity).
Follow setup in Android Messages. Will take around three minutes. If it doesn’t work, continue reading.
Clear the data of ‘Carrier Services’ and force stop ‘Android Messages.’
Repeat steps 1-4.
Select OTP Pattern, and in the menu click, ‘YoursMessengersverificationscodesissG-(d{6}).’
At the end of those steps, you will come across a prompt similar to the one above to turn on RCS in the official client. It’s more than likely that Google will shut down this Android trick to enable RCS in Messages given that carrier partners are getting sidestepped. That said, it provides a taste of what the future of Chat messaginglooks like in an ideal world.
