The Best Texting Apps For Android

Over the course of the past decade or so, phone calls have died off as our primary form of communication with most people, with text messages being the replacement. And if you’re going to use texting as much as you do, you might as well be using the best apps to do it. Let’s talk about ’em. Android Messages is Google’s vision for SMS apps on Android, and the stock option on Nexus and Pixel devices. The good news is that it’s available in the Play Store, so it works on any phone, and it’s completely free. What makes this app such a good choice is its clean, minimal interface— it just works really well. It isn’t filled to the brim with superfluous features, it just does what it does. Really, this is what most of us have come to expect from Google’s apps. Like all good SMS apps, it supports MMS (multimedia messaging), but it also has a few other tricks up its sleeve.

You can also customize conversations by assigning specific colors to contacts, but it will also do this for you automatically if you don’t want to be bothered with setting up each contact. After a while, you start to associate each contact with their color, so you can glance at your phone and know who exactly the text is from just by color. It’s a simple feature that just makes sense. In short, if you’re looking for a simple text messaging apps that just works, this is the one for you. Nearly all of us are on Facebook, and if you’re anything like me, you use Facebook Messenger almost as much as SMS for talking to friends and family. But here’s the thing: you can actually do both things directly from the same interface, since Facebok Messenger supports SMS. It even has what I feel is the best feature of the app: Chat Heads for your text messages. So you can unify all of your messages in this one place. If you’re already Facebook Messenger user, you can easily enable SMS in the app to give it a try.

First, open the app and tap on your profile picture in the upper-right corner. In this menu, scroll down and find “SMS.” Tap on that, then hit the “SMS in Messenger” slider. A popup may ask if you’d like to use Messenger as your default client—just tap “Yes.” All sorts of new options will be available after that, so feel free to customize it to your liking. Otherwise, you’re ready to start using SMS in Messenger. Also, if you just want to see SMS and keep your Facebook Messages out of your feed, just tap the “SMS” button in the top beside your profile image. Oh, and it’s free. It’s hard to beat that price. If you’re looking for all the bells and whistles from you SMS client, then look no further than Textra. This thing is chock-full with killer features, but it still somehow manages to not feel bloated. Out of the box, it features a clean, dark interface.

But if you’re not into that, it has theme support—like, dark, black, and even a smart mode that will be light during the day and switch to night mode at a specific time. You can also completely customize the color palette used, as well as the chat bubble and icon color. So, if you’re into aesthetics, you can pretty much get Textra to look however you want. But there’s so much more—honestly, more than you’d feel like reading if I tried to cram it all into this post. You can rename group texts. You can specify a sending limit for MMS messages, and Textra will compress accordingly. Sent sounds are optional. It supports blacklisting numbers. Quick replies, heads up notifications, and everything else related to notifications are customizable. It features scheduled messages. …and really, that’s just the start. Like I said, if you’re a power user, this is the app you want. There’s only one downside: the free version has ads, which are displayed inline as the first entry in your SMS list. 2.99 in-app purchase that removes ads, which is easily worth the price if you find that you dig this app like I dig this app.

And trust us, you'll fall in love with the evil pigs. Engadget (free). Frankly, your phone is little more than a paperweight until you get this titan of the Android Market installed. Extended battery. One of the problems of owning a great smartphone (if you can really call it a problem) is that you're going to be using it all the time. Trust us: literally all the time. Good headphones. The headphones that are often bundled with devices are widely known to be total garbage -- sure, they're fine for taking the occasional hands-free call, but trying to enjoy music on 'em is usually an exercise in futility. 100 on a set like Etymotic's ER6i or Shure's SE115 and your ears will thank you for years to come. Big (and fast) microSD card. Some people prefer old-school drag-and-drop music management, which is a piece of cake with Android -- but if you want something more akin to iTunes, give DoubleTwist a try. Looking to install apps from somewhere other than the Android Market,