This is amazing news. RCS messaging on iPhone is finally rolling out in different countries around the world after being initially available in the U.S.
RCS Messaging on iPhone Now Works in Canada, France and Spain After Initial United States Launch with iOS 18 Beta 2
RCS messaging was enabled in beta 2 of iOS 18 in the United States. With iOS 18 beta 3, Apple is taking things up a notch and bringing RCS messaging to even more countries.
At the time of writing, a lot of posts on social media reveal that RCS messaging is finally working in Canada, France and Spain. The actual number of countries could definitely be higher as carriers are slowly enabling support as we speak.
The wireless carrier just has to enable support for RCS on iPhone and you should be good to go. You can manually check if RCS is enabled and supported by your carrier by going to Settings > Apps > Messages. Check the RCS Messaging toggle switch here. If it’s grayed out, your carrier doesn’t support it, yet.
Given the sudden adaptation of RCS in just a couple of weeks, it will be interesting to see how many carriers support the feature by the end of the year when iOS 18 is released in its full and final form.
I see a lot of social media posts saying how RCS is going to be the end of services like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc.. I completely disagree at this point. If anything, RCS is going to complement the plethora of apps and services that are already available. Users will obviously stick to the one that works best for them. Having RCS on iPhone gives peace of mind to consumers that they will be able to contact their Android counterparts without having to download a new app. Again, a great choice.
