this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025

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Google Messages may soon stop silently failing to send RCS chats on rooted devices (www.androidpolice.com)

submitted 1 year ago by cm0002@programming.dev to c/android@lemdro.id

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[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 1 point 1 year ago

Doesnt matter to me if it's locked to Google Messages which now requires you login to a Google account.

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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 1 point 1 year ago

RCS/SMS is such a bullshit standard, I hope US citizens migrate to something less worse eventually

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 63 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Sending a message should never fail silently, so that's an improvement, but fuck whoever decided this.

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[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

If you have an iPhone and send a voice text to another iPhone and mention “Dave and Busters”, it will always fail silently. You can text the words “Dave and Busters” and it will go through, but if you say it in a voice text, it will never reach its destination.

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That sounded too weird to be true yet it's true. The problem seems to be that it generates some HTML to wrap the attached audio file, does voice to text, and doesn't escape an ampersand, which trips a firewall.

It's bad UX that it fails silently there too; at least the recipient should get some sort of explanation.

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[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (10 children)

That's what I was thinking, but reading the article it's apparently not related to sending messages. It's simpler.

Google blocks RCS on rooted devices. And at the moment they don't tell the user that at all, it just fails to work. So actively the worst way to handle it.

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[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Now to see if they mean actually rooted devices, or anything with a non-stock OS.

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[–] mortalic@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

I mean, I'm on /e/os and RCS just sits there in "Setting up" eventually just uninstalled Google nessages. RCS is obviously key to their global spying program or something. E2E my ass.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 1 point 1 year ago

The hacky workaround is to send them via Beeper, which connects to Google Messages' web client.

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[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Like everything else now, they no longer check any of that directly. It's all handled via Play Integrity API. If the device fails the Play Integrity check it will fail.

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[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

GrapheneOS stopped working years ago. Silently.

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[–] gianni@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

RCS works on GrapheneOS.

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[–] oaklandnative@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago

I'm glad it works for you but I don't think it reliably works for a lot of Graphene users:

https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/how-do-i-activate-rcs-on-grapheneos/23546/5

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1353-using-rcs-with-google-messages-on-grapheneos/254

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[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 1 year ago

Graphene OS works outside of Google's phone (Pixels)? If no, I am not considering it ever

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

Don't use Google apps

I don't trust any of them honestly

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 1 point 1 year ago

When you find a suitable replacement for GBoard, let me know. Actually don't, I've tried them all and they all fall well short of Google's prediction algo.

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[–] ChuckTheMonkey@fedia.io 56 points 1 year ago

So much for those fake open standards created by Google and can only be used by Google

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[–] db2@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (9 children)

The enshittification continues unabated.

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[–] Steve@communick.news 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is actually an improvement.
Better to give an error message, than to silently fail.

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[–] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago

Yes, but blocking RCS from rooted devices has always been a control move. I've had to deal with it for the last year plus since I root to hide tether.

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[–] db2@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

They're both enshittification, telling you why is an extra "fuck you" on top of simmering that shouldn't happen in the first place.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

It is better than silent failure

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[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

RCS is an upgrade on SMS. The whole point of rooting is to circumvent restrictions, so wait for someone to stop shit talking modern protocols and figure out how to get it working. The idea that rooting was about making things easier was always a myth. It was never that.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You can absolutely make a modern protocol

Good luck convincing anyone to use it or implement it

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[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Most users don't change defaults. It's the default in both Android and iOS.

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[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago*

iOS goes a step above, iMessage fails to have bare minimum of a modern messaging service, that being multiplatform support, instead it falls back to SMS or RCS, at least Google Messages is only SMS and RCS, as much as I hate Meta, their offering is literally more usable and better in any pratical way, Whatsapp works with very old rooted android phones, is multiplatform and can be installed directly from the website by just downloading the APK file, in regards to privacy concerns all of the 3 above are spyware. The only thing good that iMessage has, is that techinicly you don't need a phone number to use it.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 1 year ago

RCS would only be an upgrade if it was possible to use with an open client and federated. As-is there are only 2 proprietary apps and 1 server, as far as I can tell. It's basically Google's version of WhatsApp.

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[–] Chozo@fedia.io 17 points 1 year ago

It will now loudly fail.

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[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 year ago

RCS is horrible, it is a stop gap solution to a problem created by Apple, how hard is it to USA citizens to just use a proper messaging plataform, by that I mean, one that has multiplataform support and, no, falling back to SMS or RCS doesn't count. Apple's monopolistic and anticompetive behavior are a disgrace to society and humanity as whole.

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[–] viking@infosec.pub 5 points 1 year ago

People actually use RCS and Google messages?

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[–] Demdaru@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Lol, still using sms.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago

We need a better open protocol

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[–] diptchip@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just ordered my first iphone. :s

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 point 1 year ago

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[–] Nico_198X@europe.pub 8 points 1 year ago

Send it back. Not a good alternative

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[+] Turret3857@infosec.pub 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

[deleted]

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[–] diptchip@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. I also ordered another orbic wonder (probably my 5th) but this one showed up in an opened box, so I aint gunna chance it. Will use it for music. I assumed the most secure second hand phone under 400 would be an iphone. Them orbic's don't even give you that boot message when the bootloader is unlocked.