Green Bubble Emoji Reactions From Android Users Now Show Up Properly on iPhones

[MacRumors]

With the launch of iOS 18, Apple added support for RCS, or Rich Communication Services. RCS replaces SMS/MMS as the default messaging standard for any "green bubble" conversations, and because it's more modern, it supports features like read receipts and typing indicators.

RCS is also supposed to support emoji reactions from Android users, but it wasn't working properly when iOS 18 launched. It's not clear what changed, but The Verge says that something that Google or Apple tweaked made it work as of this week.

When an Android user uses an emoji reaction to a message that you've sent over RCS, the emoji will now show up in line with the message bubble, just like it does on with iOS Tapback reactions.

Prior to now, if an Android user used an emoji reaction to a message in a conversation with an iPhone user, the emoji would show up on a separate line, which was confusing and not how the feature was meant to work.

The Verge says it tested emoji reactions between iPhones running iOS 18.1 and several different Android phones, and reactions display both ways as intended.

Article Link: Green Bubble Emoji Reactions From Android Users Now Show Up Properly on iPhones

 

[CosmicTris392]

Bro's at 97% and already has low power mode on

 

[trueluck]

Bro's at 97% and already has low power mode on

That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always in low power mode…

 

[Biro]

I still have RCS turned off. Never mind emoji reactions. Messages - inbound and outbound - aren’t arriving at their destination. RCS is too buggy and unreliable. And it’s not just me and others with iPhones. Friends with Android phones have no use for RCS either. And yes, we all have carriers that support RCS.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

My emoji reactions in sms/rcs were working fine before 18.1

 

[StoneJack]

Make all rcs messages of rainbow pride color. Android users will love it!

 

[T5BRICK]

I still have RCS turned off. Never mind emoji reactions. Messages - inbound and outbound - aren’t arriving at their destination. RCS is too buggy and unreliable. And it’s not just me and others with iPhones. Friends with Android phones have no use for RCS either. And yes, we all have carriers that support RCS.

Weird. I’ve been messaging a few folks with Android phones for the past couple months and no hiccups.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Fresh of the back of their droning on about the election the Verge is back into their area of expertise. Green and Blue bubbles.

 

[spritle]

What a time to be alive!

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

When will Apple start pushing people to update to iOS 18? For now it's still something hidden at the bottom of the Software Update screen, as "another option" or something like that. It feels positioned like a public beta for techies, not something Apple actually recommends regular users to upgrade to, yet.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I still have RCS turned off. Never mind emoji reactions. Messages - inbound and outbound - aren’t arriving at their destination. RCS is too buggy and unreliable. And it’s not just me and others with iPhones. Friends with Android phones have no use for RCS either. And yes, we all have carriers that support RCS.

It’s been working perfect between my wife (Pixel 8) and myself, and other various android people I text.. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[contacos]

No one I talk to even knows this exists and carriers don't promote it either. I guess it's different when everyone is using WhatsApp anyway. I think the last SMS I sent was in 2007 or something. Glad it's an option now though. However, I wish they picked a 3rd color for this one. People don't get that it isn't a SMS and afraid it will cost 49 cent per message

 

[turbineseaplane]

I love this.
Finally

 

[witchcult]

I don't get it, it's been like this since RCS came out in 18.0? Nothing's changed. Still doesn't work for images and pictures though.

 

[Chungry]

I still have RCS turned off. Never mind emoji reactions. Messages - inbound and outbound - aren’t arriving at their destination. RCS is too buggy and unreliable. And it’s not just me and others with iPhones. Friends with Android phones have no use for RCS either. And yes, we all have carriers that support RCS.

I’ve not had any issues reported across a fleet of 400 iPhones. Wonder if it’s something related to iMessage registration?

 

[canadianpj]

In all my years of having an iPhone and having people in my life who use Android it's never once been an issue. Not sure what the problem was.

 

[SoldOnApple]

Alternate app stores in EU, rich messaging with Android, emulators in the App Store. What a time to be alive.

 

[ypl]

Numer od carriers supporing RCS haven’t increased for quite some time, at least in Europe (16). Seems like something wrong is happening in this area. Maybe the quality of service it too low for Apple to proceed with further deployments? Strange.

 

[svish]

Good to see that it is working properly now

 

[ThomasJL]

Why are RCS messages green? Why couldn't they be another color so we can easily tell the difference between RCS messages and SMS messages? Tim Cook is so clueless. This would've never happened if Steve Jobs was still CEO.

 

[Fatboy71]

I still have RCS turned off. Never mind emoji reactions. Messages - inbound and outbound - aren’t arriving at their destination. RCS is too buggy and unreliable. And it’s not just me and others with iPhones. Friends with Android phones have no use for RCS either. And yes, we all have carriers that support RCS.

RCS has worked fine for me since it became available with iOS 18. I find RCS really useful, and its now allowed me to delete WhatsApp. I only used to use WhatsApp for messaging the small amount of my friends that didn't have iPhones, so that I could and they could, send pictures etc.

Not everyone wants to use a third party app to message people who do not have an iPhone and vice versa with Android. Whats as seamless as using the included Message app that comes with the phone, so not sure why you think people with Android phones have no use for RCS.

 

[TimFL1]

I don't get it, it's been like this since RCS came out in 18.0? Nothing's changed. Still doesn't work for images and pictures though.

Because nothing changed. The Verge jumped the gun on this.

Apple is still doing the same old text message parsing for reactions they had for SMS pre-iOS 18. It has shortcomings (like it wont work on media when it can‘t properly map content) or when there is text collisions (e.g. try sending the exact same text a few times in a row and have someone react to one of them). It also seems to struggle heavily when both participants have varying locale setups (e.g. your device is english but your friends is french or spanish, since the underlying reaction placeholder texts are different languages now).

This, and the one on Verge, are false and misleading articles, I verified with 3 friends and none of their reactions come in properly parsed (they remain a text message).

There is no official reactions support on iOS RCS (how could there be, reactions were added to UP with UP 2.7 in June, whereas Apple rolls with the ancient 2.4 from 2019).

 

[Nozuka]

RCS really needs to hurry with the encryption in the standard. Everything else is not that important.

 

[SpringKid]

I just realized today that not a single one of all phone operators in Sweden support RCS anyway. I wonder how it is in the rest of the EU?

 

[Skyscraperfan]

Android user here. I would never use a message app by Google. Why do you need it, if you already have WhatsApp, Threema, Signal, Skype and Telegram? RCS is just a trick by Google to collect even more information.