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Comment by butterandguns | Hacker News Reader

So what does this mean for Google Voice and Google Fi users? All my SMS runs through Hangouts.

Yeah, this is a problem for me. I'm a long, long time Google Voice user. It is my main phone number. I do all my calls and SMS via Hangouts on my computer. It's pretty rare for me to use my phone. I'm going to be lost if I can't do this any longer, honestly.

I also have a very long time Grandcentral/Google Voice number 541-306-3055, and it’s been a journey.

With Google Voice + Hangouts you can also answer phone calls from a desktop computer/laptop very easily. I'll miss that.

www.google.com/voice Should be able to make calls from there, right?

I don't think that works for receiving incoming calls though.

There’s a slider in the iOS app that indicates it might be possible to enable. I’ll have to try that when I have a chance.

I recently looked into ways to do this outside of the US. Seems to be basically impossible other than using an iPhone/Mac with Continuity. :(

No, Hangouts works great for this outside of the US. I use it in New Zealand all the time.

IFF you have a GV number, which is US-only.

You can do SMS via Android Messages and use messages.android.com on a computer. However, unlike Hangouts, it just connects to your phone to send and receive messages.

Google Fi will be unchanged; I've been using Messages from the beginning. Voice, however, has a much better experience with Hangouts than with the standalone Voice app, and in particular the standalone Voice app doesn't let you make VoIP calls as far as I can tell.

It needs to be something that can work as a background app with notifications etc.

Messages on the web does support notifications, though you do have to keep it open. (But then, the same applies to Hangouts unless you use the Chrome app.)

What do you mean by, "However, unlike Hangouts, it just connects to your phone to send and receive messages,"? My Google Voice number is my primary number but not my cell-service number. Would messages.android.com send/receive SMS as my Google Voice number or my cellular carrier number?

Whichever number you have working through the Android Messages app on your phone. messages.android.com just connects (via Google) to the app on your phone, displays your messages from that, and lets you compose and send messages via that.

Google Voice? Google Fi?

There may be a more fundamental question here.

They _just_ rebranded from Project Fi to Google Fi, and featured it on the google.com home page, so it seems safe for now.

But it still requires Hangouts to make and accept phone calls on other devices, so far as I can see.

https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic...

There's a google voice app.

But it doesn't do SMS on the desktop.

If you are on a mac, I created a simple web wrapper for the google voice website and puts it on the menubar, you can SMS on the desktop that way. Link to the app voicenotifies.com

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