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Reaching people on Android

If your iPhone contacts get the message and your Android contacts do not, this is why — and it is one switch on your phone.

Blue bubbles and green bubbles

A blue bubble is iMessage. It goes over the internet between Apple devices, and your Mac can send it entirely on its own — no phone needed, nothing to configure.

A green bubble is SMS, the ordinary carrier text. Your Mac has no connection to a mobile network, so it cannot send one directly. What it can do is hand it to your iPhone and let your iPhone send it. That hand-off is called Text Message Forwarding, and until you switch it on, every Android contact in your list will fail.

Switching it on

  1. 01Make sure your iPhone and your Mac are signed in to the same Apple account. This will not work otherwise.
  2. 02On your iPhone, open Settings, then Apps, then Messages. On older versions of iOS, Messages sits at the top level of Settings.
  3. 03Tap Text Message Forwarding.
  4. 04Switch on your Mac in the list. A code appears on the Mac; type it into the iPhone.
  5. 05Send one test message to an Android number before running a whole campaign.

Keep the phone awake and connected

Because your iPhone is doing the sending, it needs to be powered on and on a network for the whole send. A long SMS run with the phone in a drawer on 3% battery will stop partway through. Plug it in.

If Text Message Forwarding is not listed

The setting only appears when there is another device signed in to the same Apple account that could receive it. If it is missing, check that your Mac is signed in to Messages with the same account, and that two-factor authentication is on for that account — Apple requires it for this feature. Signing out and back in on the Mac usually makes the entry appear.

Sending to a mixed list

You do not have to separate them. Human RM sends each person by whichever route reaches them, so a list of four hundred with a hundred Android phones in it is a single send. The green ones simply travel by way of your iPhone, which is why the whole thing runs a little slower than a pure iMessage send.