You May Soon Be Able to Edit Your Android Text Messages Just Like on iPhone. Here’s How

The ability to edit RCS messages looks to be rolling out for a select few users running the Messages beta app for Android. Not unlike editing sent texts in Apple’s iMessages, Google Messages may soon allow for editing RCS messages within a 15-minute window. 

iPhone users have been able to edit sent text messages since iOS 16 came out in the fall of 2022. But the text editing works just between iPhone and iMessages texts. Google looks to be doing something similar with the Android Messages app.

Here’s what we know about editing sent text messages in the Android Messages app. For more, here’s how to follow Google’s announcements at its Google I/O conference this week. And here’s how Apple’s adopting RCS will make life better when texting with Android users.

How is Google handling editing texts in Messages?

First spotted by Android Police through some Twitter sleuthing, a small batch of users report seeing the option to edit RCS messages. If the text editing is available to you, long-pressing a message will give you a pencil icon at the top of the message window, alongside the typical actions for copying the text, deleting it or starring it. After editing a message, an “edited” tag will appear below it, and diving into the message details will allow you (or the recipient) to view the original message.

Something to note is that editing will be limited to RCS chats only, not SMS text messages, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The 30-plus-year-old protocol doesn’t allow for it, and SMS limitations are why Google has spearheaded RCS to begin with. 

With the adoption of RCS continuing to grow and its upcoming support in iOS 18, this simple feature could have a fairly large impact for Android users. Since the reports have just shown using Google’s own messaging app, we’re unsure if any other RCS-supported apps are able to edit or view edited messages. We’re also not 100% on whether you’ll be able to edit RCS chat messages sent to iPhone users when support goes live, but we’d hope to see that come to fruition. 

While the feature itself seems to be limited to the beta version of the app, it looks like the batch of users it’s rolled out to is on the sparse side. We were unable to test the feature, despite both parties being on the beta version of the app. Perhaps Google will give some more insights for a wider rollout during the Google I/O keynote this week.