What are /r/GoogleMessages' favorite Products & Services?

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I may be misunderstanding you.. Are you looking to encrypt your SMS messages?

If so, You can use Silence.

https://silence.im/

It's FOSS and available on FDroid.

Naturally, both parties, sender and recipient must be using it. I've used it for several years and it works well.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Today, after months using Messages with chat enabled, I lost all connectivity to the RCS service. Just two days ago I enabled Google VPN and I had the feeling that the VPN could be the problem. I tried disabling the VPN but RCS does not come back. I am baffled by how unstable Messages is and the RCS neverending rollout issues. Also, this VPN is a Google product and I cannot believe that they are messing so much with their own services. I also have Mullvad VPN with Wireguard and never had an issue.

Sorry for your loss.

I also tend to use this program to backup sms/mms to my google drive.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore

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Can't hurt to have another backup of something. Especially if it's important to you.

I had the same issue. Turns out I didn't have the Google carrier services app installed.

Google Carrier Services

Installed that and I haven't had a problem since. Might be the same for you?

Here is the link for the Samsung One Ui version of Google Messages.

You will need APK Mirror installer to install it.

I hope this helps.

Download THIS file from apkmirror.com. It's labeled Samsung Dynamic. You will need THIS to install it.

When I was enrolled in Beta for Google Messages, the auto update feature would revert my Samsung Themed Google Messages back to Stock Google Messages. You might not have this issue if you're not on Beta though.

Textra is one of the good known app for SMS and MMS. You can Google and see how good people rate it. I'm using it many years and it's never failed me.

Here's the link from Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra

Her number not even getting normal text messages from others mean either there's a problem with network in that case activate WiFi calling which helps to get text messages ( non-rcs type message) over WiFi. See if that fix the issue. If that doesn't solve the problem then there might be a problem with phone updates? Just assuming here. Try to update carrier services , if that doesn't fix the issue than try to replace the SIM, replace a new SIM doesn't solve the issue then there must be issue at carrier side.

I found this app years ago. Unfortunately it's not free, but the one free one I found on F-Droid to try to get away from the paid one hasn't been updated in years and was too unreliable.

I love the deep level of integration Google has within it's own ecosystem. Like, astonishing how well they do it. Apple has so much to learn from them lol. Also, Google DOES test their own products... on us! /s

That being said, I think this is an Android 12 issue, because I'm having trouble with RCS on NordVPN. I had some transient issues with it on Android 11 when I had a Samsung S10e, but those would shake themselves out after clearing some cache and raising my voice at the phone. With Android 12, no amount of screen poking, setting toggling, cache clearing has made a difference. I've noticed that RCS works fine on Wi-Fi with a VPN, but on cellular data it disconnects. Ironically, I want my VPN on when I'm on cellular so I can bypass streaming quality limitations for YouTube and Twitch.

Some people have had luck with getting RCS to work if they whitelist "Carrier Services". However, I can't do that with NordVPN because they don't list System level apps. Can you add Carrier Services to the exceptions list in Google One VPN? I'd be curious to see if RCS starts working. If it does, I might have to change VPN providers. Here's a link to an article that talks about how to whitelist apps in Google One VPN:

Oops sorry, I typed that wrong, meant contacts.google.com lol. I would recommend checking there to see if your photos for contacts are syncing correctly with Google's servers.

Ok I see, but I have some questions . 1. have you restarted your phone yet? 2.have you contacted your carrier about this at all? If restarting you phone didn't work, or calling your carrier So what I would personally recommended is that you install this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging this is Google messages. I would say make this as your default messaging app over Samsung for a while now imo.

Wait so is this Google messages because I don't remember the icon looking like what you have https://www.xda-developers.com/google-messages-galaxy-s21-one-ui-design/ it should look something like this in the article.

What I would do is 1. Back up you sms and critical stuff you want to save(your issue maybe a be a bigger software issue) 2. Uninstall the messaging app(if it's Google messages then you should be able to uninstall it) and reinstall it. 3. But if you can't do that then install Google messages https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging 4. Open it enable it as your default and enable rcs on that. But if you don't like using Google messages. Clear Samsung messages storage, then disable Samsung messages, and then reenable it and make it your default messaging app.

I understand that. I thought the same as you too, but just realized Google RCS is just too buggy.

I have been moving many of my friends over to Signal. Signal not only supports SMS/MMS fallback, it can also be your default texting program and its chat features are far superior to Google RCS, and its completely private and encrypted. If you can get your friends and family to install Signal, you will have a MUCH better chat and text experience

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms&hl=en_US&gl=US.

None of those apps can do SMS/MMS. Due to the nature of those services (closed/locked in) you need to move all your contacts to the chosen one (which is cumbersome, eccentric or impractical).

You can try a third party like Pulse SMS https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xyz.klinker.messenger You'll then need to trust the developer handling your messages in the same way that Apple does with iMessage. Note that going this route you won't be able to do RCS and hence be stuck with SMS/MMS.

The only time I get the "Connecting" status with the orange letters is when I turn on my VPN.

VPNs can sometimes interfere with being connected to the chat features in the Google Messages app for some reason or at least that's the case on my phone (Galaxy A10e using Private Internet Access VPN).