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Anyone else having problems with RCS, iOS 26.5 and macOS 26.5?

For those who have 26.6 installed and this is working again - how do you have these 3 settings set in Apps/Messages/RCS Messages?

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It works on the iPhone and the Apple Watch since the "time zone" update.

Still does not work on the Mac. It's ridiculous 😡
 
Nope - does not fix it for me on my Mac. I guess now we wait until 26.6 is out or go to the beta, depending on how serious an issue it is for us. iPhone works for me..
 
Is someone using only an iPhone seeing this issue? RCS stopped working on my phone about a week after I installed the updated iOS 26.5 RC. When I switch the SIM card to an Android phone, it works. I see this for my German numbers. iOS 26.6 Beta 1 did not fix it.
 
RCS also continuously breaks here, forcing me to toggle RCS and reboot my device to get it working for a few minutes again. I still receive RCS texts in group chats though, since my other devices miraculously are still connected to RCS… just my iPhone doesn‘t work.

Crazy theory: woke up today and RCS works perfectly again. The 2 times it broke in the last week were all times where my phone had low battery / low power mode. Could iOS potentially kill RCS sending by accident with low battery levels?
 
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RESOLVED — Possible root cause identified

After several hours of troubleshooting with both T-Mobile and Apple Support, I was able to resolve the Mac send failure issue. Here's what worked and what I believe caused it.

Root cause: A previous logic board replacement on my MacBook caused iCloud to register it as a new device without removing the old entry. This left a duplicate MacBook entry in iCloud Trusted Devices — same name, recent "last seen" date. This appears to have corrupted the local Messages database in a way that allowed incoming messages to work normally while outbound sends failed consistently with "Not Delivered."

I created a new user account on my macbook to clear out any config issues, and things were working there, so I knew there had to be a way to fix my main account.

Fix:

  1. Go to Settings → Apple ID → scroll down and audit every device in your trusted devices list. Remove any duplicates or devices you no longer own.
  2. On the Mac sign out of icloud inside the messages app and quit Messages completely.
  3. Navigate to ~/Library/Messages (in Finder, hold Option → click Go → Library) and delete the Messages folder entirely.
  4. I ran Onyx to clear system and user caches — titanium-software.fr — make sure you match the version to your macOS version. -this may not have been necessary, but I did it anyway.
  5. Restart the Mac! otherwise the system will reload the messages database from the cache which is the problem.
  6. Reopen Messages, sign in and allow iCloud to resync.
Sending from both new and existing threads in my main account is now working normally.

Hope this saves someone an afternoon.
 
It did not work at all.

OS 26.5.x broke everything. Apple can be proud of it, no way.


Just in case, you can install imessage-exporter (free) and backup important SMS messages in a few seconds. Messages will be exported in HTML and it will not be possible to reimport them in Apple Messages, hence at last you will a readable backup of your messages.
 
FWIW there's a similar thread in the discussions.apple.com forum...in my case it was more SMS related but the two things might be related...long story short...Messages.app chat.db appears to have been 'corrupted' -- I think its more that the code using it was hardened and never got a corresponding fix in the db/handling -- I found a 'hack' to get it working in my case...ymmv:

IOS 26.5 Update Bug -- RCS/SMS text messa… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com discussions.apple.com
 
I was having the same issue as well, but only on one of my devices. I updated the device to 26.6 Beta (Public Beta in my case) and problem was resolved. Only had to do so on the device having issues. Didn't have to update phone.
 
Phone and watch works fine. Mas OS 26.5.x is the problem. I hope Apple will release 26.6 soon.

It's infuriating because everything else works perfectly, and has from the start. This is the first bug I've encountered with Thaoe. And quite an annoying one.
 
Greg_1984 said:
I was having the exact same problem. I couldn't send RCS messages from my Mac, iPad, or Apple Watch after updating to 26.5, but I could from my iPhone.

A workaround that I discovered:

If I go to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options on my iPhone and TURN OFF 'Limit IP Address Tracking,' I can successfully send RCS texts again from my other devices (i.e., Mac, iPad, Apple Watch, etc.). I use T-Mobile, so the issue is more than likely on their end.

Go figure.

Hope this helps...
Click to expand...
Tried this, no love 🙁 It's in a little different spot, probably because I am on AT&T.
 
I had an issue with Verizon a few months ago where my RCS messages sent from my iPhone to another iPhone were marked as "failed to send" after every message, but then went through normally, so essentially two of the same messages every time. I spoke with Verizon and they said my account was flagged for an "RCS block" for some reason, so maybe you could check with your carrier to see if you have anything like that? Once removed, I rebooted the phone and toggled Airplane Mode, and everything was fine.
 
Anyone have any idea if 26.5.2 fixes this? It's infuriating that it's gone this long without a solution.
 
First test - I updated iPhone to 26.5.2, did not update my iPad or Mac (where messages failed). Still fails. I will be updating my Mac soon...

EDIT: Just updated my MacBook Pro to 26.5.2. It's still a FAIL 😢😢😢
 
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