How to send and receive texts on a tablet

Fancy a bigger screen for managing your text- and multimedia messages? We reveal how

Aphone is all most people need to send and receive text messages, but sync your inbox to your Android tablet and you can more easily manage your SMS- and multimedia messages. You get a bigger screen and larger keypad for typing too, so here’s how to get text messages on a tablet.

The service we demonstrate in this article is completely free. It syncs text messages between your phone and tablet over the internet (Wi-Fi or mobile), but the messages themselves are still carried through your mobile network. This might be useful if you are going somewhere you know you will

have Wi-Fi but no mobile reception, allowing you to leave the phone at home and take the tablet instead. All you pay is whatever your mobile operator charges you to send a text. Most mobile contracts include free texts, but rarely picture messages.

If the reason you need to be able to text from your tablet is that your phone never gets a signal, or you’re looking for a free messaging service that syncs between phone and tablet, sidestepping mobile operator charges, try WhatsApp.

Step 1. On your Android phone launch the Google Play Store app and search for MightyText. Select it in the list of results, then tap Install on the next screen. Accept the requested permissions.

Step 2. If your Android phone is logged into a Google account MightyText should pick this up. Select which Google account to use if you have more than one, then tap ‘Complete Setup’, OK.

Step 3. Pick up your Android tablet and either browse to mightytext.net/app and select ‘Install tablet app’ or launch the Google Play Store app and search for ‘SMS Text Messaging – Tablet SMS’. As before, tap Install and accept the permissions. Step 4. Open MightyText on your tablet, select your Google account and tap Complete Setup. Tap OK on the next screen. You’ll get a message confirming your tablet has been linked with MightyText. Tap Launch MightyText Tablet App. Step 5. On your tablet you’ll see what looks like an email inbox. In the left panel you get a list of

conversations, and tapping on any of these brings up the conversation in the main panel. At the bottom is a text-entry field that can be used to send texts.

Step 6. Should you receive a new text, it will still go to your phone’s usual Messaging inbox. However, you will also receive a notification on your tablet that you have received a new text message, and it will appear in the Mighty-Text app on your tablet. Step 7. It’s possible to turn off new message notifications – or mute them – on the tablet from within the Settings menu. Tap the three horizontal lines at the top left of the app, choose Settings, then disable ‘SMS, MMS and Phone Call Notifications’.

Step 8. Also in this options menu is a Photos/Video entry. Tap on this option to manage any media sent to your phone within multimedia messages.