Why do my texts keep switching between RCS and SMS on iPhone?

i am having the same issue where i cannot use RCS with my husband(mine keep sending as SMS), but he can text me back with RCS. i am able to text everyone else that has RCS, with RCS. i have no idea why it won’t switch back to RCS for him. i tried turning my phone off and back on. and i am on wifi. Apple please fix this issue.

I now have a group text chat with my coworkers (who I am their team lead) that doesn't function properly on iOS 18.2 unless RCS is on, whereas before iOS 18 that same group chat with the same people worked fine.

Problem is RCS uses more battery and is unreliable in it's current state in iOS.

I’ve been having this very issue with a single contact. I can use RCS perfectly fine with my mum (we both use the same network), but with my boyfriend, it’ll show up as RCS in the message, but then it’ll change to SMS once sent.

I’m not sure whether that’s bc of being on different networks, his phone not supporting RCS, or whether it’s simply bc the data in our area is so bad since they got rid of 3G and Huawei cell towers. I even struggle with iMessage when I’m on data nowadays, every iMessage I try to send when out (and sometimes in the house) sends as a text bc the data is so bad at 4 bars

Same here. My daughter and I are on the same billing plan. She has an 11, I have a 13 mini, she’s the only one that I have difficulty with, and possibly a second person who has a 12, I believe. That person was having an issue too. On New Year’s Eve my messages went through just fine. However, my daughter can text me with no problem, the issue is with my phone sending to hers. I just now tested it and the message went through just fine. Hopefully this is it. It’s so infuriating, I’ve resorted to WhatsApp.

I have only one contact that RCS was working just fine with until 1/3/25 and all of my messages to that person go over as SMS. I have cut on/off RCS in messages and restarted the phone multiple times. Does anyone know how to fix this.

When I go to settings I then select general then transfer or reset iPhone, after that I don’t see reset network settings. I have reset or erase all content and settings. That scares me to not know which one to push.

Notice how, on this site hosted by Apple, no help or suggestions are given by anyone from Apple. I think that's pretty lame. Just like their half-hearted support of RCS -- which is probably only out of fear that the EU was about to make them adopt it. I'm here because I can't tell who is sending via SMS and who is sending via RCS on the macOS Messages 'app.' Why is that?

It's half hearted in that so many of us had (and still have) issues getting it working with contacts that previously worked fine in iOS. That Apple chose to not make it encrypted when the option was there. That discussion forums like this and other online communities are the only place customers can get real world help from other users with fixes like what so many of us have posted already.

We've been submitting feedback through the link that keeps getting posted here and after each major ios 18 update nothing seems to improve with RCS, so this is why we are discouraged that our feedback and requests have gone ignored.

Bikergofast wrote:

That Apple chose to not make it encrypted when the option was there.

No, RCS encryption is NOT there. It is available between Android devices using Google’s proprietary encryption method. It is not yet a worldwide standard, and, with the EU being in the mix, it may never be.

I've seen other companies where, if there is an issue in the discussion groups, they comment. Apple 'Product Feedback' is useless -- may as well be a black hole. Individual support makes no sense if a solution is not disseminated to a wider group of people having the same problem: witness this thread. Even if there is no solution, post that here and say why. Then Apple wouldn't have to have as many employees servicing the people who contact them for 'support.' So, I find your answer, and Apple's custodianship or this forum, unsatisfactory. They certainly take the time to censor these forums on occasion; maybe while they're reading it, they could pass along a summary to the appropriate engineering group for a brief comment/reply.

monist wrote:

I've seen other companies where, if there is an issue in the discussion groups, they comment. Apple 'Product Feedback' is useless -- may as well be a black hole. Individual support makes no sense if a solution is not disseminated to a wider group of people having the same problem: witness this thread. Even if there is no solution, post that here and say why. Then Apple wouldn't have to have as many employees servicing the people who contact them for 'support.' So, I find your answer, and Apple's custodianship or this forum, unsatisfactory. They certainly take the time to censor these forums on occasion; maybe while they're reading it, they could pass along a summary to the appropriate engineering group for a brief comment/reply.

My answer is FACT. If you don’t like FACTs, I am sorry.

And Apple’s Feedback has brought about widely requested changes many times; in fact, many of the enhancements in iOS 18 started as user requests. With 2 billion customers feedback from one is not going to move them; if RCS is really an issue to thousands of users, and they tell Apple, it can make a difference.

The Apple moderators don’t routinely read the forums, there aren’t enough of them to police ASC, which is reportedly the world’s largest user support forum. They will generally only review a post that has been reported by a user, and then only remove it if the post violates the terms of use of ASC.

The reason Apple (and other companies) have user forums is legal liability; Apple employees can only publish information that has been vetted by Apple Legal, so someone identifiable as an employee can’t really answer a general question. The Terms of Use have a disclaimer that posts are the opinions of individuals, and do not speak for Apple.

And if anyone reports your recent post (it won’t be me) there’s a chance it will be removed because it isn’t a technical question or a technical answer, as explained in the ToU (did you read it, BTW), and this is a user-to-user Technical Support forum.

"I can tell with each message; right

below each message in the reply box it will say how it was delivered:

iMessage, SMS, MMS or RCS. For example:"

If it's not iMessage, mine just says Text message, which doesn't tell me if it's RCS or SMS.

There is something odd about your device, then. Every one of my messages says either Text Message: SMS, Text message: RCS, or iMessage. As I posted in the screenshots earlier from my Messages app. I don’t currently have any MMS messages.

I did that first. Once I was done doing that. Is when I read to do the unread text. None of that work. I read that activation takes hours after the update. Or even days. So atp I’m just hoping it start back working. It’s annoying tho

I am having a similar issue with a seemingly different cause. I’m on an iPhone 16, and my friend has a Google Pixel. RCS between our phones has been very reliable, but just today I had my phone send a picture as an SMS because it had failed to send as RCS, and now it won’t stop using SMS for specifically that thread despite the fact that RCS works fine for other android owners I text. I can’t figure out how to fix this, as there is no obvious way to me to fix it for a single thread, and Googling it isn‘t helping