GrapheneOS announced that they are overhauling the default apps into "modern" apps, including RCS support in the messaging app, as well as implementing a secure clipboard feature to stop apps from accessing it without permission.
I used the new messaging app today and the UI finally looks modern. Some things I wished they added or would change: (a) preferences that allow us to change the function of left and right swipes, (b) speed of UI animations (it’s a bit too slow for me), (c) ability to re-name, at minimum, group chats. These will likely come in later versions as the GOS devs continue to work on the app.[1]
I do wonder how will GOS tackle the RCS challenge especially when google is gatekeeping it, It would be very interesting if GOS Devs and Community alike worked with carriers for this.
Not sure if this is what you were looking for but they did say on their socials
RCS support will be provided via an optional dependency on sandboxed Google Play for activation. In the longer term, we plan to make a fully standalone implementation requiring the carrier to support it. We probably won’t make an alternate implementation of using Google’s own system for this.
Right but how are they going to activate it, If it was that easy we would see other clients support RCS by now but they dont.
But hopefully GOS pushes forward with it so that third party apps can also have a slice of pie
My understanding is that the capability has never existed outside the vendor/OS layer. The OS underneath provides the carrier/MaaP hook. Which would mean messaging apps can’t activate RCS on their own, only ride on an OS that does. I think this is one of the reasons why GOS refers to this as a system feature.
The messaging app still needs a Search feature and a gallery/media viewer for each conversation. Until then, I can’t switch to it from Quik. But it’s still cool to see what they’ve done so far.
RCS will obviously be the killer feature if they can get that going.
I just looked at the updated texting app, and I can no longer select specific words in a text message. Every time I try to select a word, it checkmarks the the entire text bubble.
As far as I am aware this was also not possible in the previous versions. However, long press on links did copy it.
See long press to copy links · Issue #292 · GrapheneOS/Messaging · GitHub
Search is apparently being worked on GrapheneOS: "Finishing the user interface overhaul, resolving …" - GrapheneOS Mastodon
Finishing the user interface overhaul, resolving many minor issues and adding important features including search are going to be the priority before getting to RCS. […]
How are they going to implement RCS? I heard nate saying he’s not heard how they are going to do this or how it’s even possible.
It was definitely possible because I’ve been doing it for the last 5 years until just now.