Getting your texts when you switch from iPhone to Android.
What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro, this is Rich on tech. You know.
I get a lot of emails from you guys. Thanks for trusting me to answer them, which I do as much as possible. It might take me a little bit to write you back sometimes really all depends on my schedule, but I do try to respond. So I figured it in today's podcast. Let's open up the mailbag and answer a question. This is a common one, so I think it's a good thing to know about, Faby wrote in thanks for keeping us informed with all the tech around us.
I recently switched from an iPhone six plus to a Samsung nine plus.
But the problem is that.
My iPhone receives messages from friends that have iPhones, but the messages don't go through the s nine plus. My kid only uses the iPhone through Wi Fi in the house. What can I do to fix the problem. This is a great question, Faby, and it happens to a lot of people. It used to be a lot worse, but now it's getting a little bit better since Apple has changed some things. But what's happening basically is that I message is still handling your text.
Messages even though you switch to a new phone.
It's a very common issue when you switch from iPhone to Android.
Let me explain.
So, when you set up an iPhone, there's a message that asks if you want to activate I Message. This is Apple's proprietary text messaging program. It looks like a text, but it's really being sent through Apple servers, and you get some benefits because of that when you do this. When you turn on this feature, Apple basically turns your phone number into an I Message ID, kind of like think about it a username on any other service, except
in this case, it's literally using your phone number. Then, when you go to text someone, if Apple notices that that person is also using I Message, it will route your text message through their own messaging system and not the carriers. So it's actually Apple delivering your message. And all this is happening in a pretty invisible way to you, the end user. Your only indication that this is all going on is that I messages are shown in blue, and regular old fashioned SMS or text messages are shown
in green. Perhaps that's a nod to Android's green color.
I don't know.
I messages look and act like text messages, but they also have kind of some superpowers, like you can send full resolution photos, big videos.
You can see when someone's looked at your message or when they're typing a reply. People love this.
It's one of the top features on the iPhone. It's something that Apple created and it's pretty brilliant and it works pretty well until you switch to an Android. Apple doesn't necessarily know that your phone number has left their system now. Since your number is still linked to an I Message account, iPhones and other devices basically are still
trying to route your text through I Message. This means that you might still see your I messages on another Apple device, like a maccomputer or an iPad, even though your phone isn't getting them your new phone that is the S nine. What you need to do is deactivate or de register your phone number from I Message.
You can do this in two different ways.
You can go into your iPhone before you swap it out for an Android, then go into messages and turn off the toggle for I Message. This will tell Apple that you don't want to get your messages through I Message anymore. You also need to do the same for FaceTime if you've already wiped your phone or you don't have it, or you've gotten rid of it. You can then use a special website that Apple's set up to help you do this if you don't have your phone.
It's called deregister I Message, and you can find a link to it in the show notes. Or you can go to self solve dot Apple dot com slash deregister dash I message. I know that's a handful, but once you go to this website, you pop in your phone number. Apple will send you a text to confirm that you still own the number.
They don't want you doing this for your friends.
Then I message will be deactivated. Now, keep in mind it can take up to twenty four hours for all of this to actually kick in. That means for your phone number deactivation to sort of propagate through Apple systems. In that time, friends might still not be able to send you text messages. Now, this used to be a lot worse, this kind of problem, but it's gotten a lot better in recent years.
I think Apple's kind of gotten hip to this.
If things aren't working after a long time and your friends still can't get their messages through to you texting from iPhones, that is, you can tell them to delete your entire previous message conversation and start over from scratch. Usually deleting that then making a new text message with your phone number to the Android phone will definitely work.
They're gonna lose.
Your entire message history together, but that usually fixes the problem as a last resort. So there's the long short answer to your question. Fabi, Thanks so much for writing in, and I think it helped a lot of people because this happens a lot. I get this question very often. If you have a question for me, just go to my website to ask Rich on tech dot, TV, slash contact, and as always I will do my best to respond. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Damiro I'll talk to you real soon.