Google Voice adds limited MMS support for Sprint customers, more carriers coming soon

October 14, 2011 | by Andrew Kameka

Multimedia Messaging Service is now supported – kind of – in Google Voice. While users still cannot directly receive MMS messages to a Google Voice number, the GV team has announced that it has partnered with Sprint to provide a workaround in a limited capacity.

Sprint subscribers are now able to send pictures and videos through MMS to a Google Voice number. The GV recipient will then be able to access the attachment through email. This is clearly not an elegant solution, but it’s an improvement over the previous set-up that not only didn’t provide MMS, but also didn’t notify a user that someone had tried to send them something. According to software engineer Ilya Frank, Google is working on having MMS messages viewable directly within the Voice inbox.

And just to reiterate in case you didn’t catch it the first time, the MMS must be sent from a Sprint customer. So if someone on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon tries to send an MMS to a Voice number, it still will not work. Google is working with more carriers to enable this feature to work for non-Sprint customers as well. Current Google Voice customers must enable text-to-email forwarding in order for this to work.

Login to Google.com/voice and click the gear icon at the top of the page, click Voice settings, and select the Voicemail & Text tab.
Check the box next to ‘Forward text messages to my email:’ in the ‘Text Forwarding’ section.
Click ‘Save Changes.

Google Voice via Droid-Life

android google voice, Google Voice, google voice app, MMS

3 Comments

Bradicus said: On October 14, 2011

What the hell? Why would I want to forward ALL TEXT MESSAGES to my e-mail?

Why isn't there an option for "Forward texts with pictures to my e-mail" ?

Marc said: On October 18, 2011

You can set a filter to mark SMS as read and move to a label or trash in gmail. Or wait till they complete the feature.

yeswap said: On March 12, 2012

It looks like a little more of the MMS integration has been enabled.

I can send MMS to Google Voice from my Boost Mobile CDMA prepaid phone and from a PlatinumTel (Sprint MVNO) phone.

MMS sent from my Boost and PlatinumTel phones are now being received by all my forwarding phones which have the “Receive text messages on this phone” option selected in Google Voice as well as being forwarded to email.

MMS sent from my Boost and PlatinumTel phones are showing up in my Google Voice inbox without the attachment. but with the date, time, sender and any text in the message displayed.

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