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iOS 27 upgrades Messages app with key new features for RCS

iOS 27 includes several welcome additions to the Messages app, including two key upgrades for RCS conversations. Here’s what’s new.

iOS 27 makes RCS better in Messages with inline replies and improved Tapback reactions

Apple’s Messages app benefits from a variety of new features in iOS 27, like more personalized Smart Replies, a Drawing app perfect for iPhone Duo, and more.

But some of the best upgrades might be related to RCS.

iOS 27 offers improved RCS support thanks to two new features:

  1. Inline replies
  2. Full Tapback support

These changes are part of the RCS 2.7 standard, but Apple hadn’t implemented them until now.

Inline replies work just like in iMessage, letting you reply to a specific message and have it appear inline for all iPhone and Android users in the conversation.

Thanks to proper Tapback support, Android users will no longer have to see annoying messages like “Ryan loved an image” when an iPhone user adds a reaction to media.

Per Apple’s iOS 27 user guide, Messages now supports the following RCS features: “read receipts, typing indicators, Tapbacks, inline replies, and high-resolution photos and videos.”

With these latest RCS upgrades, alongside end-to-end encryption support that launched earlier in the year, RCS is a lot closer to replicating the iMessage experience.

Which iMessage features are you still missing from RCS? Let us know in the comments.

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Avatar for Ryan Christoffel Ryan Christoffel

Ryan got his start in journalism as an Editor at MacStories, where he worked for four years covering Apple news, writing app reviews, and more. For two years he co-hosted the Adapt podcast on Relay FM, which focused entirely on the iPad. As a result, it should come as no surprise that his favorite Apple device is the iPad Pro.