Quickly organise and back up your text messages

Most texting apps offer very limited options for organising or doing much else with your messages. Install Microsoft’s SMS Organizer, however, and it will organise your messages into categories – Personal, Transactions, Promotions and Starred. It also lets you quickly view unread messages, back up your messages to online storage and more.

SMS Organizer is still in beta, but we found it worked very well when we tested it. Install it from www.snipca. com/38995 and launch it. Tap the Continue button and you’ll be prompted to provide the app permission to access your messages, phone and contacts. Tap ‘Okay, give access’ then tap Allow for all the categories requested.

Eventually, you’ll reach a screen that says ‘No backup found’. Tap ‘Google Drive account’, then select your Google account and tap OK. Tap Allow on the next screen, then tap Auto backup and select how often you want the app to back up your messages. Tap ‘Skip’, then Get Started and you’ll be prompted to set SMS

Organizer as your default texting app – you may not want to do this until you’ve decided you’re happy with it, so tap Cancel here for now.

You’ll see that the app has already organised your existing messages into categories. Tap a tab at the bottom of the screen to browse each one. If a message has been incorrectly categorised, long-press it, then tap the Move button (a folder with an arrow in it) and select the correct category (see screenshot below left). You can quickly filter your messages to those you haven’t read yet by tapping the ‘Unread only’ switch, top right.