For businesses and other enterprise environments, Google Messages today announced Android RCS Archival on Pixel phones.
Some businesses, governments, and other organizations need to archive messages sent by their employees to comply with industry regulations, legal discovery (eDiscovery) during lawsuits, or respond to data requests, like FOIA requests.
In the case of text messages, this involved carrier-level logging that Google notes is incompatible with modern encrypted messaging. Instead of disabling RCS on Android at the expense of typing indicators, read receipts, and high-quality media, Google today has a new solution.
Android RCS Archival sees third-party archival apps integrate with the Google Messages application on managed work devices. This service is “notified upon the receipt of each RCS message, not only when a message is sent or received, but also if a message is edited or deleted too.”
The archival app then reads the message data and makes it available to your IT organization. With archiving happening on the device itself, end-to-end encryption in transit is maintained.
This also works for SMS and MMS, with employees getting a “clear notification on their device whenever the archival feature is active.”
Launch partners today include Celltrust, Smarsh, and 3rd Eye, with more archival apps coming in 2026. This is currently supported on Google Pixel and “other compatible Android Enterprise devices.”
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