The largest updates coming to Apple’s iMessage and its Messages app in iOS 18 aren’t its AI emoji, Genmoji, and even the flexibility to ship texts through satellite tv for pc. It’s the flexibility to lastly, lastly schedule messages to ship at a later date and time, in addition to assist for RCS, the next-gen messaging commonplace and alternative for SMS that can make texting with Android of us a lot much less painful. These updates are actually out there in iOS 18’s public beta, which simply opened up this week.

Although buried amid a slate of AI bulletins and different person interface tweaks at WWDC 2024, these messaging options can have a major influence on how individuals talk daily.

For years, shopper demand for scheduling messages has led builders to create sophisticated and cumbersome workarounds, like apps that remind you through push notifications to ship a textual content, for instance, or options that solely labored on jailbroken iPhones. The brand new iOS will supply the flexibility to schedule your messages to be despatched later as built-in performance.

The function solely received a quick point out at WWDC. In Apple’s press launch, it was introduced in the identical sentence because the Tapbacks improve, which has expanded to incorporate assist for any emoji or sticker in iOS 18. Clearly, Apple doesn’t suppose “Ship Later” is a function price spending a lot time on. However for anybody who runs a enterprise from their iPhone — or individuals who solely keep in mind the necessary issues they should textual content whereas laying in mattress at 3 a.m. — the brand new scheduling function will likely be a much-welcomed addition. Past merely making life simpler, like while you wish to textual content somebody throughout time zones with out disturbing them, Apple’s screenshot suggests you possibly can additionally use the function to make sure you don’t miss sending somebody a birthday greeting.

Of even higher significance, nevertheless, is the Messages app’s assist for RCS, the messaging commonplace and alternative for SMS that can deal with most of the grievances of texting these Android customers with a inexperienced bubble.

For a very long time, Google has urged and campaigned for Apple to undertake the usual, which might enhance the communication expertise between Android and iOS customers. The Wall Avenue Journal ran a report on the combat over the inexperienced bubbles and the way blue bubbles are essential for U.S. teenagers. Whereas EU regulators finally determined that iMessage was not common sufficient to be pressured to open up and turn into interoperable with different messaging companies, the extra scrutiny probably influenced Apple’s resolution right here — as did U.S. lawmakers’ curiosity in Apple’s shutdown of Beeper, a third-party app that introduced iMessage to Android customers.

Due to Apple’s longtime refusal so as to add assist for RCS, texting with Android customers meant no typing indicators or learn receipts, damaged group chats and blurry photographs and movies. It additionally meant that messages wouldn’t be end-to-end encrypted as they had been on iMessage.

Sadly for Android customers, Messages despatched through RCS received’t be relieved of the inexperienced bubble curse on Apple units based on screenshots on its web site, which present the function in motion. As a substitute, the textual content field signifies in a light-weight grey font that your texts with somebody assist each “Textual content message + RCS,” whereas the texts themselves are nonetheless inexperienced.

Nevertheless, points that make the Messages app a damaged expertise for Apple’s prospects will likely be addressed, it appears, as Apple says it would assist the usual later this yr. The information, after all, solely received a quick point out in Apple’s press launch, the place it famous that RCS would enable for “richer media and extra dependable group messaging in comparison with SMS and MMS.”

Earlier stories indicated Apple intends to work with the GSMA so as to add assist for end-to-end encryption within the Common Profile for RCS, however received’t assist E2EE out of the gate. That’s probably why there was no point out of encrypted messaging in Apple’s announcement of RCS.

This story was initially printed June 11 and was up to date to mirror that the iOS 18 public beta is dwell.