A setting that forces a single contact back to SMS is on its way out of Google Messages, code in a recent beta build suggests. That switch, labelled “Only send SMS and MMS messages,” sits in the conversation details screen for an individual thread. Once it goes, the choice becomes all or nothing.
The change was found in an APK teardown of the Messages build messages.android_20261002_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic. It is code that exists but has not shipped. As of October 7, no official statement about the change has surfaced. Treat it as a change in development rather than one already live on your phone.
What Actually Changes
Right now, Google Messages gives you two levels of control over RCS. There is a global switch in settings, and there is the per-contact switch inside each conversation. The per-contact one is the useful half for most people. It solves a problem with one thread without touching everything else.
After the removal, only the global switch remains. You either run RCS with everyone, or you drop back to SMS and MMS with everyone. There is no middle setting.
Why Anyone Uses the Per-Contact Toggle
The obvious case is a contact whose RCS simply does not work well. Messages get stuck sending, land out of order, or never arrive at all. Forcing that one thread to SMS is the standard fix.
There is also a practical data argument. RCS uses your data allowance and SMS does not. On a tight plan, pinning a chatty thread to SMS is a deliberate choice.
This is not the same setting as the RCS resend option. Our guide to checking the RCS resend setting, plus three more fixes covers a different group of controls. Those live under RCS chat settings and cover media quality, resend behaviour, mentions and animations. The toggle being removed here is the per-contact one.
A Simpler Menu, a Worse Tool
Removing a setting always makes an interface look cleaner. But the cleanup lands on the user. You lose a targeted fix for a known failure mode and get a blunt instrument instead.
That matters more than it sounds, because the alternative is bad. Turning RCS off globally to work around one broken thread costs you read receipts, typing indicators and high-quality media. You give that up with every other contact you message. Google has spent years telling Android users RCS is worth having. Taking away the escape hatch for when it misbehaves is an odd way to follow that up.
Messages has had a run of RCS reliability trouble lately. That includes a delivery bug Google confirmed with a fix rolling out. This switch is being taken away in that context.
Source: Android Authority, via Android Police
