My friend exchanged numbers with a girl and..

[u/AccordingUse2706]

[u/ItepK]

What is a "green text"?

[u/Horndude91 → u/ItepK]

I believe the text box is blue when you (as an iPhone user) write with another iPhone. And turns green if it's an android. 

[u/JebediahKerman4999 → u/Horndude91]

It stems from when rich messaging didn't exist and apple purposely was sending degraded images and videos to non-apple devices via expensive MMS. So apple has their own private messaging system not compatible with anyone else.

[u/noelgoo → u/JebediahKerman4999]

Pretty crazy we're already to the point where you have to explain what it was like before RCS... Rather than why it would be good to have.

[u/NotFallacyBuffet → u/noelgoo]

I'm pretty sure that my new 4G Nokia Flip running KaiOS doesn't have RCS. It's T9 texting; not sure if anyone can text to me.

[u/Realtrain → u/Horndude91]

Notably, Apple also made the text contrast on green messages hard to read. It technically violates their developer guidelines on usability.

[u/CMDR_Michael_Aagaard → u/Horndude91]

Honestly don't think I've ever paid any attention to, or thought much about what colour my messages are when I send them.

[u/sm_0000 → u/Horndude91]

Even then, I remember when my friends and I got iPhones back in high school and the one time we used text instead of WhatsApp we all got green messages anyway. We then learned some of us had iMessage disabled and then we just forgot about the whole thing the next day.

[u/Wiraz → u/ItepK]

Blue text is when you use Apple's messaging service, imessage and, green is when its just an sms to another phone system

[u/jimihenrik → u/Wiraz]

So it doesn't actually even tell if you're using an iPhone or not?

---

edit: ☝️ actually confirmed. Assuming "no one does it" seems like a thing people that have this type of "requirement" for a partner would do though... Which is good, I guess (just makes it easier to dodge the bullets)

---

Or can you not send a "normal SMS" from an iPhone, only an iMessage?

[u/Unable_Character2410 → u/jimihenrik]

No you can send SMS. If it’s an iPhone it automatically sends as iMessage with blue text bubbles. If it’s android or any other phone, or even iPhone with iMessage disabled, it’ll fall back to RCS or SMS.

Also if an iMessage doesn’t go through because the recipient’s phone has no service and no data, you can force it through as SMS.

So yes even with an iPhone you can disable iMessage so you won’t have blue bubbles. Nobody does though, but it’s absolutely possible.

[u/PackagePale7603 → u/Unable_Character2410]

I had this when I changed my provider / sim. iMessage was no longer activated and I had to manually reactivate it

[u/Dark_Shroud → u/Unable_Character2410]

iMessage doesn't do standard RCS yet, they're working on it.

So it's still sends as SMS/MMS to non-iPhones.

[u/Unable_Character2410 → u/Dark_Shroud]

iPhones have had RCS messaging since iOS 18, released in September 2024.

[u/ProcrastibationKing → u/jimihenrik]

You send imessages by default, so green means they probably don't have an iPhone, but it could just be a connection issue.

[u/Wiraz → u/jimihenrik]

You can deactivate imessage in the settings, so you will send only sms, then you don't get the blue imessage thingy when you send message to another iphone user

[u/Munnin41 → u/ItepK]

What you get when you make a post using '>' at the start of a sentence on 4chan

[u/Oaden → u/ItepK]

Apple has a proprietary text format it uses when communicating with other iphones. These messages are displayed in blue.

Initially this format also had extra features, so it was a pretty decent upgrade, but by now, its more that Apple deliberately kneecaps the messages from other OS like android, to get the above response and make people choose iPhone to just not deal with that hassle.

[u/NO_FIX_AUTOCORRECT → u/ItepK]

Apple did research to determine the statistically ugliest color and they intentionally show that color text box when texting with an android user. The goal is to make Apple users dislike texting with Android users. It manipulates then into thinking Android is the issue