How to disconnect your phone number from RCS on Android

If you have an Android phone, you may have an upgraded version of text messaging called “RCS”. This is a massive SMS upgrade, but it comes with some baggage. Here’s how to deregister your RCS number.

When you switch from one device or messaging app that supports RCS to one that doesn’t, you may experience issues with messages not being sent to the new device or app. This problem can last for up to eight days after the change. A similar thing can happen with Apple’s iMessage service.

RELATED: What is RCS, the successor to SMS?

To avoid this, Google recommends that users turn off RCS before switching. However, if you haven’t and are having these issues, it’s possible to disconnect your phone number from RCS after the fact.

How to deactivate RCS

First, we’ll show you how to turn off RCS while you still have the original device. Since RCS works through the Google Messages app, this is what we’ll be using.

Open the Messages app on your Android smartphone and tap on the three-dot menu icon in the top right corner.

Then select “Settings” from the menu.

Tap “Chat Features” at the top of Settings.

Note: If you don’t have RCS support, you won’t see “Chat Features” listed in settings.

Simply turn off the “Enable chat features” option.

That’s it! Now you can switch to the new device without having to worry about losing messages.

How to disconnect your RCS number

If you no longer have access to the original device, you can still deregister your RCS phone number.

First, go to Google’s opt-out web portal in a browser such as Chrome.

Scroll down to the “Without your previous device” section. Enter your phone number in the top text box and click “Send Code”.

A text message with a six-digit code will be sent to your phone number. Enter this code in the second text box and click “Verify”.

A message will appear saying: “Chat features have been disabled.” It may take a few minutes for the change to take effect, but that’s all there is to it.

Note: “Chat” is the term used by Google for the RCS functionality of the Messages app.