Over the last eighteen months, Google has been implementing its advanced messaging system for Android devices, designed to supersede the older, less reliable, and less secure SMS text messaging format. The company now announces that this implementation is finalized and intends to introduce end-to-end encryption for Android messages in the coming year.

Google’s Rich Communications Services functions as Android’s equivalent to Apple’s iMessage, offering features commonly found in modern messaging applications, such as typing visibility and delivery confirmations.

According to a Google blog post published on Thursday, the company intends to deploy end-to-end encryption, initially for individual conversations, with the potential for extending this security to group chats in the future. Access will be granted to beta program participants, who can register at this location, starting later this month and continuing into the next year.

End-to-end encryption ensures that communications remain private, preventing access by any third party – including Google itself – during transmission between the sender and receiver.

Google previously experimented with end-to-end encrypted messaging in 2016 with the introduction of Allo, an application that received immediate feedback from security professionals regarding its lack of default encryption. The project was subsequently discontinued two years later.

This time, Google has taken that feedback into account. Android Messages will automatically utilize end-to-end encryption when the feature is activated, and will only fall back to SMS if RCS is either deactivated by the users involved or becomes unavailable.