Texting from your desktop, laptop, or tablet

Text is the new email.

Several of my clients have taken to texting me content ideas while on the go rather than saving up their ideas to share with me later by email.

And that’s okay by me: I work on a laptop from my home office, with my phone on a cordless charger by my side.​

At first, the texting was fun.

“Oh, look! She’s had a brilliant idea for an addition to that blog post I’m writing!”

And “Okay, he wants me to move the deadline for that success story up by a week.”​

Of course, each time a client texted, I wanted to text back right away – my responsiveness is one of the reasons why my clients continue to do business with me.​

But you know what it’s like texting anything more than a short sentence on that tiny phone keyboard, right?​

Yeah. Not fun.

It takes too long. You make too many typos. And if the person on the other end sends a response, you can easily spend 10-20 minutes away from whatever you were doing before the text volley started.

I thought that, surely, someone, somewhere, must have come up with a way to text over the Internet – using the much larger, much easier-to-use laptop keyboard. My search began, and ended, with MightyText.

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UPDATE!

I started to run into a lot of problems with MightyText after publishing this piece, and subsequently discovered Google Messages, at messages.google.com. I’m in love!

But in case you’re not a Googler, like I am, you might be interested in this piece by Joy of Android: How to Get SMS Messages on Your Desktop with Android. It covers MightyText, Google, and a few other options.

Bottom line? If you’ve ever cursed at having to text on a tiny phone, especially while you’re working on your laptop or desktop, then SMS on the desktop, no matter which company provides it, is for you.

Now, read on if you’re interested in my earlier review of MightyText. Maybe they’ve worked out the kinks by now!

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The solution: MightyText — a way to text using your full-sized desktop keyboard

MightyText is an app that makes it possible to send and receive messages and photos by text using your desktop or laptop.

The process of downloading the app and syncing it with my phone took about 10 minutes. After that, I was up and running, and sent my first sample text from my laptop. (I sent it to my husband so he could help me work out the kinks before I tried to use it with a client.)​

Here’s how you can get started:​

1. Go to https://mightytext.net. If you want, scroll down the page to see all the options, or do what I did and immediately click the “GET THE APP” button. On the next page, enter your mobile phone number so MightyText can send the app to your phone. A text message with a link to the app arrived in less than a minute.​
2. Open the text that arrives on your phone, and click the link, which, in my case, opened the Google Play store, which is where I downloaded and installed the app for free. (Sorry, Apple folks: MightyText only works with Windows and Android.)
3. Click INSTALL, ACCEPT the terms, and then, after the program downloads, click OPEN. MightyText will ask you which Google Account you want to use, so choose that account and then click COMPLETE SETUP.
4. After you give the program a little more access (I know, right?!?), go to your computer or tablet, point your browser to https://mightytext.net/install to download the app on that device.
5. The screen that appears asks you to choose which Gmail account you’d like to use, so choose the same one you chose on the phone. Give the permissions, and then the next screen you see is the MightText welcome screen!

Success!

Once you go through the steps of installing MightyText and syncing it with the existing messaging app on your phone, it’s super easy to use.(And installing it is pretty easy too, despite what looks like a lot of instructions.)​

Here’s a short video that gives you a quick look at how MightyText works.​

I’m using the free version, which has plenty of functionality for me, but there’s also a Pro version, which costs $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month. The free version limits you to 250 messages per month. With the Pro version, that limitation goes away.

The Pro version also lets you:​

• Schedule text messages, so you can send that “I’ll be late in the morning” text in the morning instead of at 1:00am, when you’re going to bed​
• Use themes, to make the desktop app look the way you like it
• Send bulk text messages, so you can let everyone know about that unexpected meeting at the same time
• Get rid of ads (although I never really noticed the ads on the free version anyway)

I also discovered one unexpected but pleasant surprise: You can use MightyText to make your phone ring, too—even if the volume is off! Just click on PHONE in the left menu bar, and click the RING MY PHONE button.

No more lost phone!​

All in all, MightyText is a fabulous solution that frees up my time, lets me quickly type long text messages to clients and family, and does a lot more than I expected for the price—free!​

(Note: The original version of this article appeared in Business Circle by AT&T. This version has been modified for my blog.)​

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