Make my iPhone use the google ecosystem, esp. google voice
December 11, 2015 1:43 PM   Subscribe

I'm coming from Android. I have a new iPhone (iOS 9). I know the Apple way is different than the infinite customization of Android. That said, without jailbreaking can I ...

–make my phone default to outbound Google Voice calls over the cell network?

–make it work smoothly with my GV voicemail?

–receive texts to my GV no. in Apple's messages app?

–convince an app that shares to other social services to share with Google+? –rename my tethering/personal hotspot without renaming my phone?

Bonus snowflake level for doing the Google Voice stuff with native apps and not Hangouts.
posted by zippy to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 


Best answer: convince an app that shares to other social services to share with Google+?

Well some apps no, because they just did it themselves - like, for instance, this one game that has a button to tweet your score, and it doesn't know how to post it to any other network. But for apps that use the system Share menu (that up arrow button), press that, swipe left, and press "more" and it'll show you a list of "Activities" with on-off switches, and drag handles to reorder them, and if you have G+ installed, it will be one of them.

Except this only works for certain types of content. The G+ app declares some rules for when iOS should include it as an option for sharing content. From some quick experimentation, it looks like it says it knows how to share photos and web pages but not contacts or map locations.
posted by aubilenon at 5:04 PM on December 11, 2015


Best answer: I use gv with an iPhone, and no, you can't integrate it with Apple's apps. But if you change your voicemail to gv as it directs you to on the gv site, replace the phone app with the gv app on the iPhone toolbar, and hide phone and messages (so you don't accidentally use them) it's fine.
posted by Pacrand at 9:02 PM on December 11, 2015


Best answer: You can also configure gv on the server side to send sms to your mobile number, so that they're in your messages app. Which isn't quite what you're hoping for, but it works well enough most of the time.
posted by wotsac at 12:30 AM on December 12, 2015


Response by poster: For future questioners, I found from the advice here and experimenting that this combo works decently:

Google Voice app for dialing out
Google Hangouts for SMS and IM
posted by zippy at 8:21 PM on December 30, 2015


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