Forwarding RCS Chats

PhoneLeash forwards RCS conversations to your email inbox or to a second phone via SMS, using Android's Notification Listener permission. For a longer walk-through with examples, see the blog post: How to forward RCS chats to email or to SMS. If you are specifically here to troubleshoot RCS that is not forwarding, see How PhoneLeash works with RCS.

What Works

• Forwarding incoming direct RCS messages, with attachments
• Forwarding incoming RCS group messages, with group name and individual sender
• Forwarding outgoing RCS messages you send, so the destination inbox shows the full conversation
• Replying from email or your second phone (replies go through your normal messaging app from your original number)
• RCS OTP / verification codes (covered by the OTP-only plan as well as the personal and commercial plans)
• Apple-to-Android RCS (iOS 18+ users messaging your Android phone over RCS)

What Doesn't Work

• RCS forwarding on iPhone — iOS does not expose RCS message content to third-party apps
• RCS through Samsung Messages or other carrier-supplied messaging apps — Google Messages is required
• Outbound RCS messages with two or more images — the text and an attachment marker still forward, but the images themselves are not written in a way PhoneLeash can read. Single-image outbound RCS works. Incoming multi-image RCS works.

Setup

1. Install Google Messages from the Play Store and set it as your default messaging app. PhoneLeash's RCS support is built around Google Messages.
2. Open PhoneLeash and run the setup wizard. When you reach the notifications screen, grant Notification Access when prompted.
3. Send yourself or ask a contact to send a test RCS message to confirm it arrives at your destination.

Why Google Messages?

RCS is delivered through the user's default messaging app, and Google Messages is the only Android messaging app with a stable, broadly available RCS implementation that PhoneLeash can read notifications from. Samsung has announced that the Samsung Messages app will be discontinued in July 2026 in the United States, with users directed to Google Messages as the replacement. Switching to Google Messages now means RCS forwarding will work today, and you avoid the messaging-app transition Samsung is requiring next year either way.

Make sure you are on the latest version

Full RCS support landed in PhoneLeash 6.76 (May 2026). Earlier versions either did not forward RCS at all or forwarded it with reduced fidelity. Open the Play Store and check for updates if you are unsure which version you are on.