GoKawiilTL;DR The RCS Universal Profile 4.0 announced support for cross-platform video calls.
Google Messages currently supports video calls though ViLTE and Meet.
In its latest beta, Messages adds a new string explicitly referencing RCS video calls.
It’s almost hard to believe that we’re still finding new ways to improve messaging in 2026 — you’d think we would have gotten it pretty nailed down by now. But even after RCS arrived to start modernizing how we text, the addition of more and more new features keeps us excited about the next big upgrade waiting for us. A couple months back, the publication of the RCS Universal Profile 4.0 laid the groundwork for cross-platform RCS video calls, and now we already may be seeing the early signs of Google Messages building out support.
Let’s get one thing very clear here, early on: That “may be” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and right now we really don’t have any clear sense for just how functional these recent changes are. But even without the full picture, we’re still excited to see Messages acknowledging RCS video calls.
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For this find, we’re checking out version messages.android_20260515_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic of Google Messages. And in this new beta, we’re now seeing the presence of a just-added text string:
Code Copy Text <string name="rcs_video_call_title">Video call</string>
While Messages already offers video call support through Google Meet and carrier-based ViLTE, this string is quite clearly about RCS video calls in specific. Despite having that explicit label, we’d caution against reading too much into this.
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