RCS in Google Messages has suddenly stopped working for some users worldwide, with the app now showing the “RCS chats are not supported by your carrier” error even for carriers where it worked just days ago.
I first noticed this after seeing a post on X (formerly Twitter) about RCS status suddenly showing as unsupported.
Out of curiosity, I checked my own settings and there it was. Both my Airtel and Safaricom SIMs proudly wore the same scarlet “Not supported” badge. This was despite the RCS toggle being on for both cards. I went through the usual ritual: disable and re-enable RCS, check and uncheck SIM checkboxes, clear cache, even wipe app data. Nothing. At one point, after clearing data, only one SIM appeared for several minutes, and when the second finally showed up… yep, same “Not supported” error.
This is strange because dual-SIM RCS on Google Messages had been working perfectly for me for months. Sure, I don’t use it heavily since most people I text are still on feature phones, but it was nice knowing the option was there and worked fine with the few people I text with that have RCS enabled.
When I turned to Reddit for answers, I found an entire battalion of users in the same situation. Over the past few weeks, dozens of people have popped up reporting the exact same problem. The carriers vary. The countries vary. The devices vary. But the error message? Identical.
Even the Google Messages Community forum is buzzing with similar reports. Many long-time users mention that their carriers never officially supported RCS but Google’s Jibe platform made it work seamlessly anyway, until now.
And while Google has not issued an official public statement, one Redditor claims to have chatted with Google Support, who allegedly confirmed they’re aware of the issue and working on a fix. Support even offered a troubleshooting checklist involving Airplane Mode, clearing Carrier Services and Google Messages data, and force-stopping both but, according to that user, it didn’t work.
For me, the instructions aren’t even usable, since I don’t have Carrier Services installed. Which just adds to the theory: if this is happening across multiple devices, multiple versions (stable and beta), and multiple carriers worldwide… the problem probably lives somewhere deep inside Google’s own RCS infrastructure.
Until Google flips whatever switch broke in the background, many users are stuck with good old SMS with no “seen” ticks, no typing dots, and no high-quality photo sharing. Back to the early 2000s, at least for now.
I’ll keep an eye on this one, but for now, if your RCS says “Not supported,” you’re part of a worldwide outage that Google still hasn’t fixed.
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