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Yesterday Google started rolling out the ability to text from the web with Android Messages. The feature gives users a lot more flexibility in choosing how and where they can carry on conversations. As long as your Android smartphone is powered on, you can text from a desktop computer or even other mobile devices — including iOS products like an iPad if you just open up Safari. Aside from text, you can also send emoji, stickers, and images over the web.

Using Android Messages on the web requires using Android Messages as your main texting app on your phone. I like it just fine, and Google is clearly planning big things for the future, but if you prefer, say, Samsung’s default messages app or something else, the two don’t work together.

With that out of the way, getting started and setting things up is fairly simple.

1. Make sure you’ve got the latest version of Android Messages installed on your phone.
2. Go to messages.android.com on the computer or other device you want to text from. You’ll see a big QR code on the right side of this page.
3. Open up Android Messages on your smartphone. Tap the icon with three vertical dots at the top and to the far right. You should see a “Messages for web” option inside this menu. If you don’t, just give it some time. Google is rolling out the feature gradually to everyone over the next week.
4. Tap “Scan QR code” and point your phone’s camera at the QR code on your other device. In less than a second, your phone will vibrate and the two will be linked up. You should notice your conversations show up in the left column of the browser window. Google says that “conversation threads, contacts, and other settings will be encrypted and cached on your browser.”
   Note: this doesn’t mean your actual text conversations are encrypted. They’re not.

And that’s it. To make sure you don’t have to repeat the QR process, you can keep your computer paired with your phone by enabling “Remember this computer.” That’s in the settings menu, which you can access from the web version of Android Messages by clicking on the three-dot icon to the right of “Messages.” You shouldn’t turn this on if you’re using a public PC that other people can easily access.

Which browsers work with Android Messages on the web?

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Microsoft Edge
• Safari

Lol I just sent a text from my Android phone using Safari on my iPad turns out the web is neat.

— Dieter Bohn (@backlon) June 19, 2018

You can remove a computer’s access to your messages from your Android phone.

If you want to revoke a web browser’s access to your conversations and messaging, you can quickly do so from your Android smartphone. Go back to the “Messages for web” area of Android Messages and you can choose to sign out of individual computers or all of them with a click.

There’s a dark mode!

Android Messages doesn’t have a dark theme on mobile, but Google has created one for the web, where all the app’s whites and light grays might overload your eyeballs at night. You’ll find “Enable dark theme” in settings (on the web) right above the “Remember this computer” option mentioned earlier.

Keep your phone powered on.

Android Messages on the web can’t work independently of your smartphone. So if your battery dies or if your phone shuts off for any reason, you won’t be able to send any texts from your computer.

Drag media into the Android Messages conversation to attach and send.

Sending a photo from Android Messages on the web is dead simple. You can either use the attachments icon — to the right of emoji and stickers — or just drag and drop media into the conversation window to send an MMS.

Why type out text messages at your smartphone when you’re at a laptop or desktop PC with a full-size keyboards? These tricks allow you to send text messages directly from your PC.

Even if you don’t have access to cellular service you can use some of these tools to send SMS messages directly to a phone number. You don’t even need a mobile phone on your end.

Messages for iPhones – Mac Only

RELATED:How to Make Macs and iOS Devices Work Together Seamlessly with Continuity

If you have both an iPhone and a Mac, Apple makes this possible. You need both — there’s no way to do this with an iPhone and a Windows PC. The built-in SMS-message-sending feature on a Mac only works if you partner it with an iPhone, too — not if you have an Android phone.

This is part of the “Continuity” feature added in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. You’ll need to enable it on your iPhone by opening the Settings app, tapping Messages, and activating Text Message Forwarding to your Mac. It should then work automatically if you’re using the same Apple ID to log into both your iPhone and your Mac. Open the Messages app on your Mac and you’ll see a synced history of text messages from your iPhone, too. You can reply from your Mac or send entirely new messages from the Messages app. Those text messages will be synced to your iPhone, too.

This doesn’t cost anything extra — it just uses your iPhone’s text-messaging service. If your cellular carrier charges you for texts, you’ll have to pay that fee for the messages you send.

MightyText for Android Phones

RELATED:How to Send Text Messages From Your PC With Your Android Phone

if you have an Android phone, the best way to do this is MightyText. MightyText is an app you install on your Android phone. You can then sign into the MightyText web app in a web browser on your computer — any computer, whether it’s running Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or Chrome OS — and you can view and send your phone’s text messages from there. Browser extensions are also available. The AirDroid app for Android also does this and works well.

Like Messages on a Mac, this works entirely through your phone — your computer just becomes a gateway to your phone, which does the hard work of actually sending and receiving those text messages.

This won’t cost you anything extra. If your cellular carrier charges you for text messages, you’ll have to pay their fee.

Google Voice – US Only

RELATED:8 Reasons You Should Be Using Google Voice (If You’re American)

Google Voice is still around, but it’s also still only available to people based in the USA. If you are based in the USA, you can sign up for Google Voice for free. Google Voice gives you a new phone number, which you could use as your primary phone number if you like — although it’s unclear how long Google Voice will continue to be a service supported by Google.

Sign into the Google Voice website and you can send and receive text messages at that phone number. You can also have calls and text messages sent to that phone number be automatically forwarded to your primary phone number.

Sending text messages and placing phone calls to numbers in the US and Canada is completely free with Google Voice. You’ll have to pay Google to send text messages elsewhere.

Skype

Skype offers the ability to send text messages from the Skype desktop app. Unlike Google Voice, this is available worldwide. However, Microsoft does charge for this service, so you’ll have to pay to send text messages from Skype.

Pay for credit and you can send and receive text messages directly from Skype. However, these won’t sync with the text-message app on your smartphone. People won’t be able to respond directly to these messages, but you can set up sender ID to have the messages displayed as coming from your mobile number. if you do, people who respond will be texting you on your phone — but those messages won’t appear in the Skype app for desktop.

Email-to-SMS Gateways

Many cellular carriers offer email-to-SMS gateways you can use. Send an email to the phone number at this gateway and it will be delivered to the address. You will need to know the carrier associated with the phone number to send an SMS message in this way.

For example, let’s say a person’s phone number is 1-123-456-7890 and that’s a T-Mobile phone number. You could send an an email to 11234567890@tmomail.net. Search for “email to SMS gateways” to find lists of gateways for different cellular service providers. For example, this email-to-SMS gateway list includes different email address for many different cellular carriers around the world.

Be sure to keep your message short — under 160 characters.

There are also a variety of websites you can use to send text messages for free. These aren’t for carrying on ongoing conversations — they’re just for sending a quick, one-off message to a phone number.

Such websites don’t always seem the most trustworthy and may ask for an email address before you continue, perhaps to send you spam. These are really only ideal as a last resort.