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Android Messages Will Now Let You Send Texts From Your Computer (www.blog.google)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is beginning to roll out desktop browser support for Android Messages, allowing people to use their PC for sending messages and viewing those that have been received on their Android smartphone. Google says the feature is starting to go out to users today and continuing for the rest of the week. Text, images, and stickers are all supported on the web version.

To get started, the Android Messages website has you scan a QR code using the Android Messages mobile app, which creates a link between the two. In today's blog post, Google also goes over numerous other recent improvements to Android Messenger including built-in GIF search, support for smart replies on more carriers, inline link previews, and easy copy/paste for two-factor authentication messages.

18 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. How exciting by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    Although I seem to recall I could send messages in the early days of the Internet. ICQ, Zephyr, Jabber, OSCAR, YMSG, ...

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    1. Re: How exciting by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Which of those were SMS?

      There was a number of open SMS gateways, completely free, unauthenticated and anonymous. Give me at least three reasons they are no more...

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    2. Re:How exciting by sacrilicious · · Score: 2
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    3. Re: How exciting by mjwx · · Score: 2

      Which of those were SMS?

      There was a number of open SMS gateways, completely free, unauthenticated and anonymous. Give me at least three reasons they are no more...

      1. In most countries the sender pays for the SMS.
      2. In most countries the sender pays for the SMS.
      3. In most countries the sender pays for the SMS.

      Now I know that technically is only one point, but I thought it was big enough to be mentioned thrice.

      The difference is now that most SMS services are now data based, rather than telephone based as they were in ye olde GSM spec.

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    4. Re:How exciting by bigpat · · Score: 2

      Although I seem to recall I could send messages in the early days of the Internet. ICQ, Zephyr, Jabber, OSCAR, YMSG, ...

      It is really a shame that the IETF didn't get ahead of the curve and simply make the subject optional and specify a more SMS like use case and user interface to go along with email.

      Having to specify a subject and having apps that primarily display messages by subject really has really hurt email. Most of the time you don't need a subject line and it is redundant with the first line of the message. Otherwise the use case is exactly the same and email is universally addressable using the user@domain address rather than a phone number which is locked in to a telecom provider.

      The issue today is universal addressability and routing. Email is an open protocol which is universally addressable and supported by an Internet infrastructure. SMS is a walled off communications protocol which you need gateways to get on the Internet. It happened to gain popularity because cell phone providers made it easier than email (don't have to have a subject, message and recipient, just a message and recipient). But it's big downside is that you can only send SMS to someone with a phone number and you can't send SMS using Internet addresses directly. You need an SMS gateway which seems to add a bunch of routing garbage that makes it less clear who sent what.

  2. would they? by fluffernutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google wouldn't use this to scan all your texts with non-consenting people........... would they?

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  3. Welcome back to 1975! by Brama · · Score: 2

    When we could send messages cross platform BY DEFAULT, and no one considered this a "feature".

  4. Re:WOW! by vux984 · · Score: 2

    "A feature available on a Mac for years!"

    But which only works if you have an apple phone and an apple computer. Thanks Apple. Thanks for nothing.

    Glad to see google doing this. Because im not going to get an iphone and switch to a crappy mac desktop just for SMS.

  5. Re:Been doing this for 10 years with my Mac+iPhone by jhesse · · Score: 3, Informative

    And anyone else who has an iPhone.

    What would be nice though is if I could send SMS msgs from my Mac to my children's Android phones.

    Sending and receiving SMS messages from the Mac to Android phones works. You need to have your phone number associated with your iMessage/iCloud/Apple ID/whatever. Setup seems kind of non-intuitive, but once it works, you have a log of all your SMS/MMS conversations on the computer.

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  6. Um, couldn't we always? by marcle · · Score: 2

    It's easy to send a text from a desktop PC, using any email client.Simply look up the SMS gateway email address, readily available online if you know the recipient's carrier, or you can use their phone# to find their carrier. Every carrier has an SMS/email gateway, and the specific phone number is itself the address. This is all easily found using any search engine. Et voila! Once again, some highly touted "app" simply provides a slick interface to something that was already dirt simple, and thereby collects even more of your personal info, while trying to strengthen your ties to their particular ecosystem.

  7. Google voice already does this by pgmrdlm · · Score: 2

    I use google voice as my primary phone number. That is also where I do all of my text messaging. You can log into google voice for all kinds of things off a PC browser other than settings. I text from it all the time because it is easier not to fat finger messages, also can pull up articles for cut and paste. Hell, I tell all women I know to use google voice. You can use a phone number with a different area code. Unlimited blocking. You can mark a phone number as spam, and guess what. They get a message that this number is no longer in service. I don't worry about giving my google voice number out. You piss me off, you are marked as spam. That, you can't track me by my area code. And no, this does NOT include police/911. Thankfully I found this out when they were trying to find me during a last heart attack when I was riding a bike. No matter how often you change phones, or phone numbers. You can always have google voice forward to it.

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  8. Re:Not new. by pgmrdlm · · Score: 2

    Your missing the point of google voice. It is a single number that can be used for any phone. Make it the primary, and never worry about giving out a new number again. also works with land lines, which also gives you the ability to have sms with land lines.

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    Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
  9. Wherego ICQ, Zephyr, Jabber, OSCAR, YMSG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There was one problem with ICQ, Zephyr, Jabber, OSCAR, YMSG, etc from the perspective of the telcos. They listen on a TCP/IP connection to achieve the instantaneous delivery. When deploying to national scale its too much, especially in earlier days when gear on poles was weaker. Because SMS is stateless, notification of a message can be a single bit on the pole. The bit becomes the notification a SMS message is available for delivery.

  10. Jolla/Sailfish OS by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Jolla/Sailfish OS user here. I can SSH into my phone from the PC and send an SMS, for bonus nerd points: https://together.jolla.com/que...

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    Hell Segmentation fault

  11. KDEConnect by c0d3g33k · · Score: 2

    An alternative for Linux users is KDEConnect (may work on Mac/Windows with some effort, but not supported). Not quite the same and requires an application installed on the desktop computer rather than working over the web, but offers more functionality and definitely more privacy.

    A short features list from the github (https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-kde) page:

      - Shared clipboard: copy and paste between your phone and your computer (or any other device).
      - Notification sync: Read and reply to your Android notifications from the desktop.
      - Share files and URLs instantly from one device to another.
      - Multimedia remote control: Use your phone as a remote for Linux media players.
      - Virtual touchpad: Use your phone screen as your computer's touchpad and keyboard.

    This operates over your existing WiFi network using TLS encryption.

    The SMS support is still a work in progress, but currently you can receive notifications on your desktop of incoming text messages and reply to them. Can't initiate yet, but that's coming.

    https://community.kde.org/KDEC...

  12. Re:Been doing this for 10 years with my Mac+iPhone by pnutjam · · Score: 2

    KDE connect lets me do this.

  13. Re:Been doing this for 10 years with my Mac+iPhone by omnichad · · Score: 2

    And I could send texts to one of my children when he had an iPhone. Then he switched to an Android phone – same number – and sending SMS texts to him no longer works.

    And did he de-register the phone number number from iMessage? If not, Apple is trying to route the text to a device that's not picking up the message. A severe lacking on Apple's part, but extremely fixable.

  14. Re:Whatsapp web - and it's better! by gosand · · Score: 2

    WhatsApp Web is great, and WA is so much better than SMS. You can send much larger messages, and it handles large attachments. I sent a friend a 30MB PDF via WA, and I get photos/videos daily from various friends across the country in a big group chat. The only downside of WA is that Facebook bought them, and up to that point FB didn't have any of my info.

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