Green Bubble Check

Did your message send as RCS or SMS?

Pick both phones. We will tell you which protocol actually carried it, what broke, and whether it was encrypted.

Your phone
Your phone

Not sure? How to check your version and your RCS switch

Their phone
Their phone

Not sure? How to read their RCS status

* The exact version numbers behind these bands have not been confirmed against Apple or Google documentation yet. The bands themselves are right; the boundaries are our best understanding.

Add carrier and app details (more accurate)
Conversation type

"I don't know" is a real answer here, not a cop-out. When you pick it we show you both outcomes and how to tell them apart, instead of picking one for you.

It depends, and here is exactly what it depends on.

What it depends on

  • If both carriers have RCS switched on for these lines — the message goes as RCS, and everything in the feature list below that says "works" actually works.
  • If either carrier has not provisioned RCS on that line — the message drops to SMS or MMS, and the feature list collapses to the last column.

Can anyone else read it

Depends — check the lock icon

We do not know enough about this pairing to tell you whether the conversation is encrypted, and we would rather say so than guess. The branches above decide it. unverified

  • If it goes as RCS and both sides are current — encryption is likely, but the carrier still has the last word.
  • If it drops to SMS or MMS — there is no encryption at all.

What works in this conversation

  • Read receipts — Depends unverified On RCS — Supported in both directions, and still off for anyone who turned it off. On SMS/MMS — SMS and MMS have no read receipt at all. Nothing to switch on. Why
  • Typing indicator ("…") — Depends unverified On RCS — One of the first things people notice working after RCS connects. On SMS/MMS — No live channel exists, so there is nothing to display.
  • "Delivered" status — Depends unverified On RCS — Works across platforms once the chat is actually on RCS. On SMS/MMS — Only if both carriers support and forward delivery reports. Many do not. Why
  • Full-quality photos and video — Depends unverified On RCS — This is the single biggest visible difference from falling back to MMS. On SMS/MMS — Heavy compression to fit the MMS size cap. This is the classic blurry photo. Why
  • Reactions / Tapbacks — Depends unverified On RCS — Believed to attach properly rather than arrive as text — this is the cell we most want to confirm. On SMS/MMS — Arrives as a separate message reading "Liked a photo" or similar. Why
  • Edit and unsend — Not available unverified Understood not to carry between an iPhone and an Android phone.
  • Naming a group and leaving it — Depends unverified On RCS — Only if every participant is RCS-capable. One person who is not drops the whole group to MMS. On SMS/MMS — No name, no leaving — you can only mute it. Why
  • Voice messages — Depends unverified On RCS — Believed to play inline on both sides. On SMS/MMS — Arrives as an attachment to open rather than a clip to tap.
  • Location sharing — Depends unverified On RCS — A static pin generally travels. Continuous, live sharing usually does not. On SMS/MMS — Becomes a map link in the message body.
  • Long messages arriving in one piece — Depends unverified On RCS — Length is not a meaningful constraint. On SMS/MMS — Split into segments; emoji and accents cut the per-segment limit sharply.

Why it fell back to SMS

It worked yesterday and stopped today, or only some messages fall back.

RCS needs a data connection on both ends. If they were in a dead zone, on aeroplane mode, or out of data, the message falls back to SMS.

What to do: Nothing to fix — it will use RCS again once they are back on data. Full steps

RCS shows "Setting up" or "Connecting" and never finishes.

Provisioning is done by the carrier and can take hours after switching it on.

What to do: Work through the six steps in the guide, in order. Full steps

Both phones look right, both are current, and it is still SMS.

The carrier has not provisioned RCS on that line. This is common on prepaid and resold lines.

What to do: Check the RCS status screen on the handset rather than trusting a support article. Full steps

3 less likely causes
It broke right after a new SIM, an eSIM transfer, or moving the number to a new carrier.

RCS registration is tied to the line, and the registration does not follow the number automatically.

What to do: Re-register: turn RCS off, restart, turn it back on, and give it a few hours. Full steps

It is a short code, a company, or a number that never replies personally.

Business messaging runs on a different track from person-to-person RCS.

What to do: Nothing to fix. This is expected. Full steps

They moved from an iPhone to an Android phone and now your messages vanish.

Their number is still registered to iMessage, so your iPhone keeps sending into a service they no longer use.

What to do: They need to deregister the number. There is a page for it that works without the old phone. Full steps

Check this on your phone (15 seconds) unverified

  1. Open the conversation in your normal texting app.
  2. Look at the send button and the message field — an encrypted RCS chat shows a small padlock next to them.
  3. Look at the delivery status line under your last sent message; encrypted chats label it rather than just saying “Sent”.
  4. Open the conversation details screen and read the line that describes how the chat is being carried.

Worth reading next

Version facts behind this answer: not verified yet. Anything marked unverified is our best understanding, not a checked fact. See the update log

Version facts on this page: not verified yet — the site-wide verification pass has not been completed. See the update log

How to check this yourself on your phone

Our answer is a prediction from what you told us. The phone in your hand has the actual answer, and it takes about fifteen seconds to get it.

  1. Open the conversation and tap the message box.
  2. Read the placeholder text. Apps say which service they are about to use — "Text Message", "RCS message" or similar.
  3. Send one short message and watch the status line under it.
  4. If it says "Delivered" straight away, you are on iMessage or RCS. Plain SMS usually says nothing at all.

One warning about the placeholder text: it tells you what the app intends to use, not what happened to the message you sent an hour ago. A message can be composed as RCS and still go out as SMS if the connection drops in between.

What iMessage, RCS and SMS actually are

SMS and MMS are the old ones, and they are old in a way that matters. SMS was designed to fit unused space in the signalling channel of a 1980s phone network, which is why a text is 160 characters and why anything longer arrives in pieces. MMS was bolted on later to carry pictures, and it does so by squeezing them down to roughly the size of a single email attachment from 2004. Neither has any encryption. Your carrier handles the contents because handling the contents is how it delivers them.

iMessage is Apple's own service. It runs over the internet rather than the phone network, it is end-to-end encrypted, and it only exists between Apple devices. When you send to another iPhone it goes over iMessage and the bubble is blue. When you send to anything else it cannot, so your phone falls back to something the other device can actually receive. That fallback is the green bubble. Green was never an insult — it just means "this did not go over Apple's service".

RCS is the replacement for SMS that the mobile industry agreed on, and it is what green bubbles are supposed to be now. It gives you typing indicators, read receipts, real delivery confirmation, photos that still look like photos, and groups that behave like groups. It runs over data, which is why it needs both people to have a connection. And because it is a carrier service rather than one company's app, whether you get it depends on three separate things agreeing: your software, their software, and the network underneath.

Why the answer changes depending on who you are texting

Most articles about this answer the question once, in general, and then never touch it again. That is why they are wrong by the time you read them. There is no general answer. Whether your text is encrypted right now depends on your software version, their software version, and whether both carriers have switched the encrypted variant on for those two specific lines. Change any one of the three and the answer changes.

So this site answers by combination instead. Where we do not know something — your carrier, their software — we tell you both outcomes and how to tell which one you are in, rather than picking the likely one and sounding confident. Where a fact behind an answer has not been checked against a primary source, we mark it. A confidently wrong answer about who can read your messages is worse than no answer at all.

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