Apple is finally letting green bubbles send message reactions

Apple is showing some love to Android users by finally displaying their message reactions correctly. Now when an Android user reacts to an RCS message from an iOS user, the selected emoji will appear in line with the message bubble on iOS — instead of archaically appearing as a separate line like this: “💀 to ‘that wasn’t supposed to happen.’”

The Verge sent test messages and emoji reactions between iPhones running iOS 18.1 and different Android phones, confirming both devices now display reactions as intended. It’s unclear when this change happened or whose side — Google or Apple — had to make adjustments to get it working.

When RCS first launched widely on iOS in September, message reactions from Android users still weren’t being displayed correctly on the iPhone, even though they worked the other way around. We reached out to both companies for comment but did not hear back before publication.

Apple’s quiet improvement to RCS messages comes as a surprise. Apple for years ignored Google’s campaign to get the company to adopt the standard, ultimately complying only after a mix of pressure in both China and the EU. Basic support for RCS was included in iOS 18.

Within the Messages app, Apple officially supports the basic RCS standard known as the RCS Universal Profile. Emoji reaction support is part of RCS version 2.7, which should also include the ability to edit a sent message — but we could not make that work on iOS. Of course, Apple will keep as many exclusive features as possible for its blue bubble iMessage service, at least as long it isn’t forced to change.