9/12/2019 Messages App For Mac
Send unlimited messages to anyone on any Apple device, using the same Messages app on your Mac as you do on your iPhone. And make unlimited high-quality video and audio calls right from your Mac with FaceTime. I started using the Verizon Messages app several years ago to have text messages synced across mutliple devices, only one of which is a Verizon mobile device. I use the Verizon Messages app on my phone, tablet, a Windows computer and a Mac (the latter being the corporate computer).
Messages on macOS lets you communicate with friends, family, and coworkers across a variety of different platforms, including Apple's own iMessage, along with SMS and services from Google, Yahoo, and AOL. But if you're new to the Mac or have just never set up Messages, you might be wondering how to get started with the app. Follow these simple steps, and you'll be chatting with your friends in no time at all. How to set up Messages on the Mac.
Launch Messages from your desktop, dock, or Applications folder. Enter your Apple ID email address and password. If you have two-step or two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple ID, enter your verification code.
Click on Messages in the Menu bar and select Preferences. Select the Accounts tab. Select the phone number and email addresses at which you would like to be reached.
Choose which phone number or email address people will see when you start a new conversation. How to set up Messages in iCloud in macOS High Sierra Messages in iCloud keeps your messages in sync between your Mac and your iOS devices, and also lets you download your messages when you set up a brand new device. Open Messages. Click Messages in the Menu bar. Click Preferences. Click the Accounts tab.
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Click on your iMessage account. Click the checkbox next to Enable Messages on iCloud. Click the Sync Now button to sync immediately. And that's how you turn on iMessage sync. Of course, to use it properly, you'll also need to turn it on on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 11.
How to set up Messages in iCloud in iOS 11.4 You'll need to make sure Messages in iCloud is enabled in iOS 11 so it can sync messages between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Open Settings. Tap the Apple ID banner. Tap iCloud. Make sure the switch next to Messages is flipped to the green 'On' position.
Tap Apple ID. Tap Settings. Tap Messages.
Tap Sync Now to immediately sync your message with iCloud. Let us know in the comments below! Update June 2018: Added sections for activating Messages in iCloud in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.4.
When you’re cranking away on the computer, stopping to answer a text message can be an annoying interruption. Yes, it’s very much the definition of a first-world problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something worth solving. The fix is to use a service that syncs your text messages with your PC.
This way you can get the message, type a response, and get back to what you were doing. There is no native Android solution, but here are four rather solid options. None are perfect, but here are four of the most reliable options for keeping you connected to your Android phone’s text messages from the desktop. MightyText was born with this very problem in mind. It does an admirable job at doing exactly what you need in this respect—syncing up your texts into a web client that you can then use to message. You need to install the Android app and give the requisite permissions to access your messages and phone calls (MightyText can also dial out).
The interface is pretty easy to use, with some theme customizations available. You can use the or grab a for continued access. Greenbot MightyText handles message sync well, although the service has bigger ambitions beyond texting. There are definitely some quirks. When you first sync up your messages, those that you’ve archived with Android Messages will also appear in your list (you can delete them from MightyText). You can send GIFs, but the recipient will get them as a link instead of embedded with the message. Greenbot MightyText can even dial out if you want to expand the feature set beyond just texting.
And as with much of life, not everything is free. A $5 per month (or $60 per year) pro plan gets you beyond the 250 message limit per month, and offers other advanced features like notification mirroring and the ability to save and schedule drafts. AirDroid One of the original apps to mirror your phone to the desktop, remains a solid option for keeping your texts in sync across your desktop and phone. Greenbot AirDroid puts all your messages inside of a web or desktop app. When you grab the and create an account, you’ll be able to sync up not just those messages but other notifications that come from your phone.
There’s a desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Chrome that puts your messages and links to other content from your phone at the ready. A word of caution on the Windows version: during installation there’s an offer to install a rather spammy search extension into Chrome. It’s an unnecessary piece of software that will force you to re-enable Google as the default search in Chrome.
Just avoid it. Beyond that, AirDroid does the job well. It’s loaded with other tricks beyond just messaging, like taking a screenshot and displaying all your notifications. Greenbot Along with all of the message notifications, you can use AirDroid to If you want to use AirDroid on an unlimited number of devices, get unlimited file transfer, and a batch of other features then you’ll need the $20 per year premium plan.
Pulse Pulse is a lean, fast, full-featured SMS app with a great Material Design aesthetic. It doesn't go overboard on the features, but it's fast and smooth and has support for inserting GIFs, photos, and location. It's got some nice customization options for tweaking color, font, day/night modes, and which options you want on the notification shade.
That's all in the free. Using the app just as a SMS client is free forever (and it's pretty good at what it does). If you want to message from your tablet and computer, you can pay for a 'message from anywhere' upgrade. After a free one week trial, that will cost you either $0.99 per month, $1.99 for 3 months, or $5.99 per year. If you just want to pay once and be done with it forever, you can do that for $10.99.
Pulse App The Pulse SMS app is free for your phone, but if you want to text from anywhere you'll have to pay. The money goes toward fully encrypting your messages, and keeping the apps ad-free. No SMS/MMS app can secure your messages as they're sent to your contacts (only over-the-top internet messaging platforms can do that), but Pulse does do end-to-end encryption of your messages between your devices and its server. So they can't see your information, and can't sell it. But they do need it (at least in encrypted form) to keep your devices in sync. Once you shell out for the upgrade, you can use a, chrome web extension, Firefox extension, or the Pulse website to text and send SMS and MMS messages right from your Windows PC, Mac, or Chromebook. Or grab the app on a tablet that only has Wi-Fi to text from that.
It even supports AndroidTV and Android Wear 2.0! Pulse is made by the same people who make, a highly customizable texting app for power users. EvolveSMS gives you a ton of options, but its cloud sync was always done through some third-party service. Pulse is a little different. It's simple, quick, fully integrated, and it just works.
Google Voice It’s easy to consider Google Voice an afterthought. The service, which Google acquired ten years ago, seemed to languish in obscurity before a sudden burst of life earlier this year. It now does the stated purpose very well—mirroring texts, calls, and voicemails across your devices.
Greenbot Google Voice is built to be accessible across platforms. The rub is that you either have to use a new phone number that Google assigns you, or import your own number into Voice.
But doing that will result in a fee from your carrier, which will then require a new phone number while Google Voice operates as your shadow phone number. Greenbot If you dare, you can send your number to Google Voice. This means Voice probably isn’t the ideal solution for those who don’t want the hassle of surrendering their number over to Google or changing over to a new one. Beyond that, Google has done a good job at modernizing the way Voice works. The SMS and MMS integration looks solid and is reliable.
The app will be an important part of Google’s strategy to push RCS across to other carriers, and it should support this when you’re communicating with someone’s phone that does. This list tells you one thing for sure, and it’s that getting this functionality is still a bit messy.
There’s no universal, first-party solution that works as flawlessly as Apple’s iMessage works across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If you want that same type of consistency, then an might be the way to go.
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