I’ve heard the process is a pain in the ass and not very reliable. I am trying to prepare for when Apple adds RCS support because unfortunately in the US almost everyone has an iPhone and refuses to use a messaging app outside of iMessage.

I have installed sandboxed play services and the Carrier Services app from the google play store with a dummy google account and have put in my phone number in Google Messages for it to verify but it has not been able to do anything and is just stuck on “Trying to Verify” for hours now.

I’ve already tried clearing cache and everything as well.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: the following did the trick! Steps are to

  1. settings
  2. apps
  3. Sandboxed Google Play
  4. Google settings
  5. mobile data messaging
  6. phone number verification
  7. automatically verify phone number (toggle on)
  8. RCS should verify
  9. Back to 7. And toggle off

Then go to Google Messages and enter xyzzy in the search bar, click the debug option, click RCS, and click on Force Client to Unregister, and then I went to click on RCS in the settings again and boom it was enabled.

  • @userEnglish
    2•2 months ago

    Thanks bud. On step 8, RCS still says ‘setting up’ & ‘trying to verify’ Should I continue with the rest of the instructions? Or wait for step 8?

    • @MagneticFusion@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2•2 months ago

      Did you go through the debug menu and everything?

      Also you might need to install the Carrier Services app from google play. I also had given phone, call, contacts, and sms permissions to both play store and play services.

      • @userEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        Installed now carrier services w no network permission 🤣 now its telling me ‘maximum number of retry attempts reached, try tomorrow’ 🤷 will play w it tomorrow. Appreciate the replies. 👍

          • @userEnglish
            2•2 months ago

            I enabled network permission, still nothing. Tried step 8 and search for debug setting nothing came up. So I uninstalled carrier services app. From memory when I got RCS working some time ago, I think I disabled some permissions I had enabled. But can’t remember where. I will dig through GOS instructions, I assume they’re somewhere. When I get a chance. Thanks for assist.