Your days with a company-issued Pixel may soon feel a little bit different. Google is now bringing support for third-party archiving of RCS chats on fully managed Android devices, enabling employers to log (e.g., your copying, sending, receiving, editing (“redacting”), deleting) messages you enter in Messages by Google — mostly because legislation and regulation say they have to.
The change affects businesses that depend on Android Enterprise device management and that require compliant, searchable message records to support e-discovery, FOIA, audits, or sector-specific regulation. Google says end-to-end encryption remains intact in transit, but captures are performed on the device so you can retain content without breaking encrypted delivery.
What Google Is Changing for RCS Archiving on Android
Google has created an on-device interface that will allow whitelisted archiving apps to pull in RCS message content and metadata for collection from the active, default Messages app on fully managed, company-owned Pixels, as well as other Android devices. In the past, businesses were forced to collaborate with carriers or make do with selective SMS logs. That model faltered as RCS usage and end-to-end encryption spread.
By moving capture down on the device, it gives employers accurate records while keeping RCS encryption between the participating parties. For employees on managed devices, explicit notifications will be presented when the archiving feature is turned on — which can also be centrally set and disabled or deactivated by IT folks through their mobile device management stack.
Why Employers Need RCS Archiving for Compliance
Police, insurance firms, and the public sector have strict rules around keeping business communications. In the United States in recent years, regulators have fined firms billions of dollars across dozens of institutions for conducting work over “off-channel” messaging that was not preserved. Public agencies typically are subject to FOIA and state sunshine laws that routinely grant access to pertinent communications.
As RCS matures — Google has reported more than one billion monthly users for Messages — employers can’t afford blind spots. A legally admissible workflow to archive contemporary text threads, with their edits and deletions, mitigates risks while bringing RCS more into line with how good-faith recordkeepers already tend to treat email and chat.
How It Works and What You’ll See on Managed Pixels
How an IT admin can deploy it
On a fully managed device, IT can make an archiving or compliance app available using Android Enterprise tools like Google Admin, Microsoft Intune, or VMware Workspace ONE.
Once turned on, that app can collect RCS messages at the device level, often gathering sender and receiver details, timestamps, and message content itself (including edits and deletions).
Importantly, the flow of data is not concealed. Users will be alerted that the archiving of messages is in place, and organizations are required to notify of the policy in onboarding materials. The method maintains end-to-end encryption over the wire but retains a business record at the endpoint where the conversation takes place.
What Is and Isn’t Covered on Company-Managed Devices
It’s a feature that works for RCS in the Messages by Google app on fully managed, company-owned devices. It doesn’t inherently apply to consumer messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram — those would require dedicated enterprise features or integrations. Nor does it apply to personal devices with only a work profile, unless an organization actively sets enrollment into fully managed, which comes with oversight as well.
For the time being, SMS/MMS behavior could still depend on carrier and device policies, but Google’s move directly targets that RCS black hole — especially as RCS increasingly comes close to being Android’s default rich texting environment with its ever-broader cross-platform support.
What It Means for Workers and IT Administrators
For workers, the guideline is still straightforward: Assume that company-issued phones are monitored. If a device is fully managed, assume business communications can be archived and avoid using that phone for private discussions you wouldn’t want duplicated on a compliance system.
For IT chiefs, it reduces friction. On-device archiving brings RCS on par with other enterprise channels for discovery timelines and retention schedules. Companies should combine the feature with strong policies, user-facing disclosures, and data minimization aligned with advice from industry groups and privacy bodies like the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
The Bigger Picture for RCS in Regulated Industries
RCS has moved beyond simple texting, introducing read receipts, high-resolution media, and encryption — features that made archiving more difficult but crucial for compliance-heavy industries. With increasing adoption of interoperable RCS across other platforms, enterprise-grade controls such as on-device capture are essential for widespread adoption in regulated industries.
In short: if you’re using a company-owned, fully managed Pixel, your work can now save your RCS messages in a compliant manner. The transport is still encrypted, but the endpoint gets placed in the record book.
