TextNow Guide
Features

TextNow 101: Messaging

Kevin

Kevin

 

August 8, 2022

TextNow 101: Messaging

People really love using TextNow, and we know how important it is to get back to your messages. So here's a quick 101 on key texting features available with TextNow:

Free international texting with TextNow

Just like texting to a phone in the US and Canada, we don't charge anything to text to other countries. The rumors are true, we can't stand cell phone plan fees either.

The person you're texting does need to be on a carrier that supports texting from TextNow, and we have a list of those carriers on our help site.

Turn on (or off) quick replies on Android

Quick replies allow you to reply to a message from your phone without having to open the TextNow app, even from the lock screen. You can find it in your settings menu, under Settings > Messaging > Quick Reply

From here you can turn on or off whether you see the quick replies as a popup and on the lock screen. (Sorry, iOS users – Quick Reply is only available on Android.)  

Start a conversation with multiple people using TextNow

It's quick and easy: Start a new text message, enter a contact's phone number, or name, or nickname from the contacts stored on your device:

Then just keep adding more numbers to create a group message:

Note: You can also make two separate message threads instead of a group message. From there you also have a bunch of options for managing the group – tap on the icon with three vertical dots in the upper-right corner to find options for:

  • Change Group Name to edit the name of your group text.
  • Mute notifications mutes the notifications for this specific group chat. (Other notifications aren't changed.)
  • Members shows you the current people in the group.
  • Open Bubble Chat opens the group message inside a floating chat bubble, so you can access it from any page on your device.
  • Set Wallpaper allows you to set the background wallpaper for this group chat.
  • Add shortcut adds a shortcut to your device's home screen to allow you to jump right from that screen to the group message.
  • Export conversation exports the current group conversation to a .txt file, email or other app on your device.

Send pictures and GIFs with TextNow

What would texting be without pictures or GIFs? To send a picture, tap on the camera icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the messaging page. You can either take a picture with your camera and send it directly or choose a pic from your device's photo library. To send a GIF, tap on the icon that has GIF in it, right next to the camera icon. That'll pop up a window with the day's most popular GIFs, or you can search for the perfect one using GIPHY search:

What's your favorite emoji to say hello? Tell us below!

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