You can say goodbye to the dreaded “🥲 to ‘why the hell aren’t emoji reacts working?’” from iOS to Android with RCS.

Apple wasn't too excited to do so, but it finally added RCS messages on iOS 18, paving the way for SMS to finally be a thing of the past. Now, one of the remaining compatibility issues is being ironed out.

It was discovered by the folks at The Verge that reactions are displayed as intended when they were sent between iPhones running iOS 18 .1 and different Android phones. At this point, it's not exactly clear which company made this change happen: either Google or Apple.

Brands’ interest in RCS and RCS business messaging is now rising. Over 70% expect RCS to be one of their primary customer communication channels within the next five years, while 73% predict it will become the default messaging channel within a decade, according to Sinch’s discussions with senior marketing and digital communications specialists.

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.