Text one number from one app, other numbers from another app. Android

February 20, 2021 10:23 PM

I've multiple times now sent texts meant for someone else to the (same) wrong person. Most recently somewhat disastrously. Without going into details about why this person always ends up getting my texts, I'd like to text to/from that person with one app and keep all other texts on another. Can I do that? I use an android phone.

I want SMS/texts, not to say talk to the one person or the other people by whatsapp or some other means. I want this to be invisible to the person who's been accidentally receiving my texts.

posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

It is my experience that you have to set a default app for text/SMS that uses your phones actual number.

I could be wrong. Also this is an idea that just occurred to me and may not work or may be very inefficient. How about setting up a 2nd user on the phone. Delete the contact on your original main user and create a new contact in user 2. When you want to send a text to wrong person switch users. It will still have the same number but will be separate from the original user. In original user, if the contact is not there, it will be much harder to send to wrong person. I think a different user can have different default apps, but even if they cannot, using a different user will keep them separate.

Maybe if you root the phone it can be done with one user. I would ask this somewhere on the XDA forums. My guess too is that it matters what phone you have because of any proprietary changes a manufacturer makes to the Android os.

The other idea is to get a Google voice number and tell the wrong person that you changed your contact number and to use that. Use GV for them and say android messenger or signal or whatever you prefer for everyone else as you do now.
posted by AugustWest at 12:36 AM on February 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

In original user, if the contact is not there, it will be much harder to send to wrong person.

No harder to reply to them, though, if that's an issue.
posted by flabdablet at 1:01 AM on February 21, 2021

I want this to be invisible to the person who's been accidentally receiving my texts.

Does this including them coming from your existing phone number? There's apps like Burner or Google Voice that let you get additional numbers and text them but I don't know that I've heard of anything that lets you split a single number between two apps, which is what it sounds like you're asking for (unless you're willing to keep the existing number for just the one person, and move everyone else to a new one, which sounds like more trouble than it's worth).

I found two links saying that at least in 2012 there was no way for there to be two SMS apps with access to the phone's main number.

https://androidforums.com/threads/using-2-sms-apps-together.603115/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20250730/is-it-possible-to-have-2-functional-sms-apps-on-kitkat

Things may have changed since then, but I doubt it. Your need is an edge case and there's a lot of bug that allowing two apps to share access to SMS could cause that I'm sure they'd much rather avoid to preserve the user experience.

One final thought - could you be sly and be all excited about Telegram (or another alternate chat system) and see if the one person would be willing to use it to communicate with you rather than SMS?
posted by Candleman at 6:05 AM on February 21, 2021

In original user, if the contact is not there, it will be much harder to send to wrong person.

No harder to reply to them, though, if that's an issue.

Actually I think it would be harder to reply to them NOT KNOWING it is them. Your contact will show up as say Mary Smith. But the deleted contact will show up as 315-555-1212. Seeing a phone number rather than a name might force you to take pause before replying. It would most likely cause you to at least notice.
posted by AugustWest at 10:19 AM on February 21, 2021

I've found with Google voice you only need to set the settings to receive messages to your main phone account otherwise you have to go into the app itself to send and receive messages. Once you do that even when you open the messages from your main phones message center (the number it's from will be transcribed as a VOIP number followed by the actual number)returning the message will re received as though it's from a different number.
posted by The_imp_inimpossible at 3:06 AM on February 22, 2021