Why do my texts keep switching between RCS and SMS on iPhone?

This is happening to me as well since the ios 18.1.1 update last friday. Sometimes I send a msg and it goes by RCS but mostly its going by sms. My boyfriend's msg are coming to me as rcs but when i reply it sends as sms. Prior to the ios update everything was by RCS both ways with zero issues. I wish I hadn't updated the ios...Apple needs to fix this crap

My iPhone keeps defaulting to SMS instead of RCS. I have SMS disabled and the RCS is active but it still defaults to SMS. I’ve restarted my phone, I have not had any issues with RCS until recently and now I can’t get it to come back.

i am having the same issue where i cannot use RCS with my husband(mine keep sending as SMS), but he can text me back with RCS. i am able to text everyone else that has RCS, with RCS. i have no idea why it won’t switch back to RCS for him. i tried turning my phone off and back on. and i am on wifi. Apple please fix this issue.

I had one contact frozen as SMS. I tried restarting, resetting networks, turning RCS on and off. Nothing worked. The only thing that worked for me was going into Messages clicking Edit in the top right. Selecting the contact. Then clicking Unread instead of delete. Immediately switched back to RCS.

I, too, am having the same issue. Rebooting my phone and toggling RCS on and off didn’t resolve the problem.

This was happening to me too after I woke up to find my phone auto updated. I waited about a day, and then waited for my boyfriend running a Samsung phone to send me a message (making sure it said RCS for it) and I replied back with a photo from my camera roll while connected to wifi. Suddenly it began to work again and my messages towards them are no longer swapping back and forth every time I text.

I solved my SMS/RCS issue by resetting networks:

To reset your iPhone or iPad's network settings, you can do the following: 

1. Open Settings
2. Select General
3. Select Transfer or Reset iPhone or Reset
4. Select Reset Network Settings
5. Enter your passcode if prompted
6. Select Reset Network Settings again

You will lose saved wifi passwords however.

This is happening to me, too — only with one contact however. It started as soon as the new update hit, which auto updated. This needs to be fixed! I keep restarting my phone, sometimes that helps but only for a little bit.

When I text my Android friends with RCS the status indicator briefly changes from RCS to SMS and back to RCS after the message is sent. Anyone elses do that?

I just realized that my messages are also sms when I have rcs enabled. I turned my phone off an on, it’s still the same. I updated my phone also so I’m figuring that’s when it happened. It wasn’t like this before the update.

That didn’t work apparently. Now it’s back to doing it again and only working a few times a day.

It was only with one contact with me too. But tonight it happened with a second contact. Sometimes the messages don’t even go through. This is awful

Make sure RCS business messages are off, I was having this same issue and looked and this setting was on for some reason. I turned it off and RCS is back. Hope it helps.

This is still happening to me on 18.3, to the point where group chats with androids are opening multiple chat threads on the recipients phones. I had to completely disable RCS now or the messages app is pretty much unusable with android recipients.

This is the behavior I get, after the message is sent it flips from RCS to SMS and back again. It's quick so watch close:

https://youtu.be/VXXmVfsl7ow