Group SMS on Android?
January 25, 2025 5:28 PM   Subscribe

How can I send a group SMS (not MMS, nor RCS, nor anything else requiring an internet connection) on Android?

I occasionally have gatherings at my house, to which I invite roughly the same group of people. All the people have cell phones, but don't necessarily have data plans or data turned on.

I'd like to send an SMS to all the phones, but the stock messaging app and a few others I've looked at seem to make any group message into an MMS, or something else that is data-dependent. I don't want that to happen. The recipients don't need to be able to reply to the group, see who else is in the group, or use any other group features. *I* don't need any other group features.

All I want is to not have to cut and paste the same damn message about my party as a dozen separate messages!

Ahem. I am a bit frustrated. Have YOU solved this problem? Recently?

Very much open to out-of-the-box solutions involving other ways of driving the messaging app, if that's what's required, but probably don't want to bother rooting this phone. It's a Motorola G31 running Android 12.
posted by inexorably_forward to Technology (8 answers total)
 
SMS dues not have this feature.
posted by kindall at 6:02 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I've never tried it, but it looks like you can instruct Android devices to behave this way. If you click on your profile in the top right of the messaging app and then navigate to Messages Settings -> Advanced (scroll down) -> and then Group Messaging, do you see an option to send and receive group messages individually? Might be a pain if you have to toggle it off/on for this one use case though.
posted by phil at 6:20 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure why you don't want to use RCS, as it does exactly what you want, working over WiFi without requiring a data connection. The only caveat is everyone in the group would need to have RCS enabled.
posted by jaden at 7:20 PM on January 25


Best answer: I believe Fossify SMS Messenger can do this. Your recipients won't see a group chat, but you can add them all to one chat and send a text that goes to all of them, which should be sufficient for mass party invites.

(I haven't used this for a large number of messages, just with a couple test numbers, but it seems to work. Whether your carrier might decide you're spamming if you added 500 recipients, or what that threshold is, I have no idea)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:41 PM on January 25


(and yes I am almost certain that it's not sending MMSes, you can flick a "send group chats as mms" option on in the settings but I didn't, and I sent them successfully with data/wifi turned off)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:44 PM on January 25


As a general tip for other readers: rather than wade through the Android app store, when I have a really specific thing I need an app for, I look through F-Droid (an alternate app store that only hosts open-source, free apps) instead, which usually surfaces non-scammy apps for/by nerds. That's where I spotted that the Fossify app- the second one that came up in search- had a "use MMS for group chats" toggle.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:50 PM on January 25


Best answer: I use the Play Store app Handcent NextSMS specifically to do this. At the creation of a Group Chat, an option is immediately presented to switch the conversation to Bulk SMS. The message will be received by all members of the group as an individual text, and any replies sent are received by you only.
posted by ohcanireally at 7:34 PM on January 26


Response by poster: I marked everything that works as best answer.

In more detail, for future readers:
The setting that phil mentioned is worded very confusingly on my phone (it seems to imply that this behaviour kicks in when I am replying to, not sending, a message), and when I start to create a group message the phone still says 'New Group MMS', but it in fact does send separate SMSes, which is the desired result. I had looked at this before but been put off by the lack of clarity and not actually tested it, oops!

Fossify SMS does the right thing, and I appreciate that it's open source, but it doesn't make it as easy as the stock app to select multiple people. (I realise that I could work on that feature myself!) Thanks BungaDunga for the tip about F-Droid!

Handcent NextSMS does the right thing, but I didn't see a one-time-purchase way to get rid of the ads. I'm happy to pay for apps but don't want to KEEP paying for them.

So as it turns out, I had the power all along. Thanks, all!
posted by inexorably_forward at 5:11 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]


« Older Help us Japlan   |   Bedtime for a big kid Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments