I owned and used an iPhone for quite some time, and one of the best things about it was iMessage. Not because you could text over WiFi to a friend who also owns an iPhone, but because of the ability to text to others from your computer. I could leave my phone upstairs while I did all my work in my office downstairs and respond to text messages without ever picking up my phone.

It’s a very seamless feature on iOS, and I only recently discovered that you could do the same thing on Android with a couple of third-party applications. With that in mind, we’re going to show you how to set up your computer to receive and send messages with an Android device. The process will work on almost any Android device.

Hit the break to follow along!



MightyText

MightyText is probably the best service for achieving the results we want. It allows you to text from your computer, but it also lets you do so much more. MightyText allows you to see things like your phone’s battery level, schedule messages, text from Gmail, use templates, set up different things for MightyText and oh so much more.

Some of these features do require a Pro license, but the basic receiving and sending of messages from your computer is free. First up, you’ll need to download the MightyText application for your smartphone.

Play Store Download Link (Phone)

Play Store Download Link (Tablet)

Next up, you’ll need to download the MightyText program for your computer.

Once you have everything installed, you’ll need to set up an account and start linking your computer to your Android device. You’ll need to open the MightyText app to start the connecting process. Just select Complete Setup once you open it. After selecting that, you’ll need to visit the companion site to complete the linking process.

And do keep in mind that you’ll need to be using the same email address on your smartphone that you created a MightyText account with.

Once you’ve done that, you should be ready start texting from your computer. There are a few things you should keep in mind before you start texting from your computer, though. In some cases, a text message won’t send. I came across this a couple of times, and it seemed to be because I had my smartphone connected to the WiFi. That said, if you run into texting problems, just turn off the WiFi and set your smartphone in a spot where it has good cell reception.

That should fix any issues you come across. Alternatively, you can relink your smartphone and computer, as that also cleared up some issues for me. To do this, open your smartphone app, hit the hamburger menu in the top right corner, and select Unlink Phone. Then, just follow the steps above to relink it and you should be good to go!

If you’re not fond of MightyText, AirDroid might be a better option for some of you. Here’s how to set it up:

AirDroid

AirDroid is very similar to MightyText, but has been around a bit longer. In my opinion, it has a bit of a better interface anyway. To begin the setup process, head on over to AirDroid’s homepage on your computer. Next, click on the big “Download” button. From there, AirDroid should begin automatically downloading on your computer.

While it’s doing that, you can head on over the the Play Store and begin downloading the Android application there. Alternatively, you can grab the APK directly from here.

Once the download has finished on your computer, follow the setup wizard to complete the installation process. It may take a few minutes, so sit tight.

Once complete, open AirDroid on your computer. Next, click the “Sign Up” button right under the big green “Sign In” button. In some cases, Windows will give you a “Security Alert.” In this case, just click “Allow” and you should be all set.

Next up, open AirDroid on your Android device and sign-in with the same account we just set up. Finally, you’ll need to enable the AirDroid Notification Mirror Service. A prompt should pop up taking you through the process of enabling that (pictured above).

Now you’re all set! You’re ready to text!

There is one small caveat. To text on AirDroid, your friends also need to be registered with AirDroid. If that’s a problem, MightyText really is your best bet. However, AirDroid is still nice to have, as it lets you seamlessly transfer files between your Android device and computer.

Closing

And that wraps up our guide for setting up texting on your computer. iMessage was always a useful tool for me, not requiring me to have to pick up my smartphone while working. Having something like this on Android is neat because it truly help you stay focused and productive. And while third-party applications like MightyText and AirDroid certainly do the job, it would be nice if Google at some point offered something similar within the Android OS.

After all, Google already offers the Android File Transfer application for Mac. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to extend it to offer some sort of texting interface and even provide a Windows application at some point. Of course, an idea like this is fairly far-fetched, as Apple will no doubt be ready to set up some sort of litigation for “stealing” their ideas and inventions.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with something like MightyText, which isn’t so bad in its current state. It’s actually very well polished and will be worth using for the time being.

If you ran into any issues in setting either service up, be sure to leave a comments below, and we’ll hopefully be able to help you get things up and running!