Ryan Haines / Android Authority

Apple has taken another significant step toward narrowing the massive feature gap between iMessage and Android-iOS cross-platform texting. The company just rolled out iOS 27 beta 2, and in it, Apple has finally added native support for emoji reactions and inline replies for RCS conversations.

As Aaron Perris shared on X, iOS 27 beta 2 allows iPhone users to send inline threaded replies to specific RCS texts, mirroring the long-standing functionality in many messaging apps and services, including iMessage.

Further, Perris notes on X that iOS 27 beta 2 also finally fixes how emoji reactions appear in RCS conversations on the Android user’s end. Previously, when an iPhone user reacted to an RCS message, the Android recipient would see a clunky, annoying separate text message describing the emoji reaction. Now, when iPhone users react with an emoji in an RCS conversation, the reaction appears natively and properly to the Android user as an emoji reaction instead of the separate text description.

iPhone users can now also react with photomojis, and it is said to reflect properly on both ends.

These new additions come on the heels of Apple officially introducing default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for cross-platform RCS chats, a crucial security update that rolled out to the masses with stable iOS 26.5. While that previous update finally fixed a glaring years-long security oversight, it still left users dealing with clunky interface mismatches and feature disparities, though these seem to be gradually getting fixed.

Because these new features (emoji reactions and inline replies) rely on the newer RCS 2.7 Universal Profile standard, the door is also open for other much-requested capabilities. The standard technically supports message editing and unsend, meaning Apple could very well introduce even more upgrades (catch-up features) as the iOS 27 beta cycle progresses toward its stable public release this fall. Since these are cross-platform features for RCS conversations, Android and iOS users can finally dream of having proper text conversations without feeling like they’re missing out due to platform lock-in.