{"id":118620,"date":"2026-05-04T20:17:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/apple-is-finally-going-to-make-texting-secure-between-iphone-and-android-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T20:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:38:17","slug":"apple-is-finally-going-to-make-texting-secure-between-iphone-and-android-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/apple-is-finally-going-to-make-texting-secure-between-iphone-and-android-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple is finally going to make texting secure between iPhone and Android"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<hr class=\"custom-gradient-background my-6 h-(6px) max-w-(75px) border-0\"\/>\n<p>Perhaps the best thing to happen to smartphones in the last five years was Apple&#8217;s decision to start supporting RCS. Since then, texting between iPhone and Android has no longer been the nightmare caused by SMS: Group chats work just as they should, photos and videos can be sent in high quality, and you can even see when the other person is typing \u2013 though the message. <em>Are<\/em> Still green. <\/p>\n<p>Although the experience is miles better than before, it is not perfect. RCS on iPhone is still missing some key functions. For example, you can&#8217;t unsend messages, reply to a thread, or edit iPhone messages. The latter may only be on the Android side, while only iPhones can react with emojis for now. However, the biggest omission is support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE). This is arguably the most important advantage of RCS over SMS. E2EE &#8220;scrambles&#8221; your messages, and only you and the recipient have the &#8220;keys&#8221; to unscramble them. If a hacker accesses your messages remotely from an untrusted device, they won&#8217;t be able to read them: the only way to view these messages in plain text is to have access to the trusted device associated with them. <\/p>\n<p>If you have an Android device, and you text with other Android devices using Google Messages, you likely have this benefit. When you send your messages you may see a small lock icon next to them, indicating that the texts are sent with E2EE. iPhones have this advantage when texting other iPhones, because iMessage is also E2EE. But when you text from iPhone to Android, whether you&#8217;re using RCS or SMS, those messages are not protected by encryption, which makes you vulnerable to hacking. <\/p>\n<h2 id=\"end-to-end-encryption-support-for-rcs-will-roll-out-with-ios-265\">End-to-end encryption support for RCS starting with iOS 26.5<\/h2>\n<p>That is changing now. Apple has been beta testing E2EE support for RCS on iPhone since iOS 26.4, <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2026\/05\/04\/ios-26-5-coming-soon-with-these-new-features\/\" title=\"open in a new window\">And confirmed that this feature will come with iOS 26.5<\/a>. What&#8217;s more, anyone can try it out right now\u2014provided you agree to enroll your iPhone in Apple&#8217;s beta program. As long as your Android friends are running the latest version of Google Messages, and you&#8217;re running Apple&#8217;s iOS 26.5 beta, you can rest easy knowing that your messages are protected by end-to-end encryption. <\/p>\n<div class=\"pogoClear relative my-10 border-b-(1.5px) border-t-(1.5px) border-dashed border-black py-5 sm:my-14 sm:border-0 sm:py-0\" data-ga-click=\"\" data-ga-template=\"News\" data-ga-module=\"openweb_widget\" data-ga-element=\"openweb_scroll\" data-ga-item=\"openweb_scroll_midpage\" x-data=\"{&#10;         commentsCount: null,&#10;         hasComments: false,&#10;         async fetchCommentsCount() {&#10;             try {&#10;                 if (window.openweb &amp;&amp; typeof window.openweb.getMessagesCount === 'function') {&#10;                     this.commentsCount = await window.openweb.getMessagesCount('01KJ87PX2KM57W75WTK5Q3NND1');&#10;                     this.hasComments = this.commentsCount !== null &amp;&amp; this.commentsCount &gt; 0;&#10;                 }&#10;             } catch (e) {&#10;                 console.warn('Failed to fetch comment count:', e);&#10;             }&#10;         }&#10;     }\" x-init=\"fetchCommentsCount()\" x-cloak=\"\">\n<div class=\"relative flex justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex max-w-fit items-center gap-x-3 bg-white px-5\">\n<p>            <span class=\"text-sm font-medium text-black\"><\/p>\n<p>                What do you think so far?<br \/>\n                <button class=\"ml-1 font-semibold text-brand-green underline hover:text-brand-green-700\" type=\"button\" aria-label=\"Comment section trigger\" onclick=\"window.openweb.scrollToComments('01KJ87PX2KM57W75WTK5Q3NND1')\" x-text=\"hasComments ? 'Post a comment.' : 'Be the first to post a comment.'\"\/><br \/>\n            <\/span>\n        <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Once iOS 26.5 is officially released, you will be able to take advantage of E2EE with RCS. But until then, you need to install the latest beta on your iPhone to try this encryption. However, don&#8217;t do this without thinking. Beta software is in testing, which means it may have bugs and other instabilities that you&#8217;re not used to dealing with in iOS. If something goes wrong, and you need to uninstall the beta, you&#8217;ll need to completely reset your iPhone. Unless you have a full backup of iOS 26.4 on your computer, you may lose data. By the way, I never recommend installing a beta on your primary device. Of course, it&#8217;s your choice: just understand the risks. All that said, Apple&#8217;s latest beta update is a Release Candidate (RC), which, barring any major bugs or glitches, is the version of iOS 26.5 that the company plans to release to the general public. This is by far the safest beta release to try, but it still has some risks. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n            var facebookPixelLoaded = false;\n            window.addEventListener(\"load\", function() {\n                document.addEventListener(\"scroll\", facebookPixelScript);\n                document.addEventListener(\"mousemove\", facebookPixelScript);\n            });\n            function facebookPixelScript() {\n                if (!facebookPixelLoaded) {\n                    facebookPixelLoaded = true;\n                    document.removeEventListener(\"scroll\", facebookPixelScript);\n                    document.removeEventListener(\"mousemove\", facebookPixelScript);\n                    window.zdconsent.cmd.push(function() {\n                        ! function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n                            if (f.fbq) return;\n                            n = f.fbq = function() {\n                                n.callMethod ?\n                                    n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);\n                            };\n                            if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n                            n.push = n;\n                            n.loaded = !0;\n                            n.version = \"2.0\";\n                            n.queue = ();\n                            t = b.createElement(e);\n                            t.async = !0;\n                            t.src = v;\n                            s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);\n                            s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);\n                        }(window,\n                            document, \"script\", \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js\");\n                        fbq(\"init\", \"37418175030\");\n                        fbq(\"track\", \"PageView\");\n                    });\n                }\n            }\n        <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps the best thing to happen to smartphones in the last five years was Apple&#8217;s decision to start supporting RCS. Since then, texting between iPhone and Android has no longer been the nightmare caused by SMS: Group chats work just as they should, photos and videos can be sent in high quality, and you can<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1601,2145,1906,2653,2913,26027],"class_list":["post-118620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-finally","tag-iphone","tag-secure","tag-texting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118655,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118620\/revisions\/118655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}