Google is silently blocking RCS messages on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 718 points –
Google is silently blocking RCS on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs (Update)
androidauthority.com

TL;DR

  • Users who have rooted their phone, have their bootloader unlocked or are using some custom ROMs report that their RCS messages are not being sent, even though RCS shows them as connected.
  • The Google Messages app does not show any error messages when blocking RCS messages of these users and does not send the messages out as SMS or MMS either.
  • Google famously campaigned for Apple to include RCS messaging in iMessage but is now blocking it for certain Android users.
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I've disabled it for now. Rooted phone is enormously more valuable to me than RCS that only half works right to begin with.

I was able to get RCS working again yesterday by updating to the latest version of Play Integrity Fix, but if that hadn't worked, I would have disabled it and then probably switched over to Textra or Yatta for texting since RCS is basically the only thing keeping me on messages for texting.

You can just install the PlayIntegrityFix module. It works again.

Google doing shit and it's fine to circumvent it.

Yep. Sadly WhatsApp is the standard now.. I'd like to go back to something neutral like SMS, but not if they pull this shit.