Google Messages
Fewer than 5 people recommend it so far, so there's no written verdict. Here is what commenters said.
Why people recommend it
“It fully works on GrapheneOS via the official sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer support for it.”
“RCS is fully supported via Google Messages”
Show 1 more
“Google Messages fixed this issue a long time ago”
Caveats and dissent
“I can't count the number of articles people have written over time about how many first-party messaging apps Google themselves have put out (and then put down)”
“On android you can only use RCS in the Google Messages app”
Show 2 more
“instead it seems to be shrinking towards just Google Messages, using Google's servers”
“mostly Google's fault for taking as janky of an approach as possible when it comes to its Messages app”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Apple Platform Security (Jan 2026) [pdf] 3 mentions
- RCS for Business 3 mentions
- GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17 and official releases are coming soon 2 mentions
- I just want working RCS messaging 2 mentions
- Roblox Officially Supports GrapheneOS 1 mention
- Phone is about to stop being yours 1 mention
Data: google-messages.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 13
“It fully works on GrapheneOS via the official sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer support for it.”
“RCS is fully supported via Google Messages”
“Many people choose to use this setup because it opportunistically adds e2ee for chats between iPhones and other Androids using Google messages.”
“It requires using Google Messages rather than any other messaging app”
“Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages.”
“I can't count the number of articles people have written over time about how many first-party messaging apps Google themselves have put out (and then put down)”
“Google Messages fixed this issue a long time ago”
“the proprietary protocol that Google Messages uses”
Unfortunately, I think what a lot of people don't know is that RCS actually has "client authenticity verification"[1]... the RCS server has to actively approve any attempts for a client to connect, if it's Android/iOS/etc. There are no standards for how this should be implemented, Google uses Play Integrity and Apple uses App Attest at the current moment, with explicit proprietary support by the Jibe servers. It's ba
“On android you can only use RCS in the Google Messages app”
Here's the 3-year-old, 1k+ comment discussion that begs to differ: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/1722 It's gotten inoperable on AT&T recently, and the Graphene team doesn't seem to care because RCS isn't completely E2EE (due to Apple dragging their feet) and therefore not a priority
“instead it seems to be shrinking towards just Google Messages, using Google's servers”
“mostly Google's fault for taking as janky of an approach as possible when it comes to its Messages app”