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PSA: Google Voice + Hangouts MMS is not currently sending, but here’s an easy workaround

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Quick heads-up for those of you using Google Voice through Hangouts: something is a bit screwy with MMS messages. Users have found that they can not successfully send an MMS for whatever reason.

The issue doesn’t affect their ability to receive MMS messages, so if someone sends you something you should be OK. The issue also doesn’t affect SMS in any way.

The good news is that Google is on the case, or so says Googler Alex Weisen over at a Google Groups thread discussing the issue:

Our engineers are looking into this now, sorry for the inconvenience! I’ll update again when I have more information.

Even better news is that there’s an easy workaround to get your MMS to send while we wait for Google’s fix: simply add some text before your MMS attachment, and it appears the MMS messages go through just fine.

We’ve tested this fix and it’s consistent enough for our liking, so be sure to keep it in mind if you find yourself needing to send a picture message at some point. We’ll be sure to update this story with any more information Google provides.

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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13 Comments

  1. I don’t use MMS, I’m more of a Hangouts guy, but I know a few people that do. I hope this gets fixed sooner than later.

  2. I dont think you can add text before an attachement. I think you add the attachement, then add text??

    1. So then do they mean add a subject?

      1. So I have just verified. What they mean is to add the attachment, then add text to the message as well before sending.

  3. Does anyone know if it’s possible to send MMS through Hangouts on the PC?

    1. You’re asking to send text messages as well. I don’t think you can use texting through Hangouts. Though on a computer, you should be able to use Google Voice to send your text messages. Check and see if you can attach a photo when trying to send a text message using Google Voice.

      Voice.google.com

      1. You can elect to do all GV texting through Hangouts. Once that is done, the voice.google.com site will give you a message informing you of your election to use Hangouts, and only list call records (no text). You can reverse the decision to use Hangouts, but it’s all or nothing. I’m pretty sure that even if you have not shifted to using Hangouts, there is no way to attach a photo using the Google Voice web interface.

    2. It was previously, it looks like the option was removed a few days ago, Google forums say it’s a bug and it’s coming back, but currently, no you can’t.

  4. Has anyone figured out how to send an MMS using Google voice without hangouts? I don’t use hangouts and still need gvoice web features (and search, and call redirect, and a cleaner interface, etc…) so I reversed the hangouts merger and am using the original google voice app. Good news is that MMS that are sent to me arrive in gmail so no big loss on not using hangouts so only thing missing is that I just can’t send an MMS….

    1. I don’t think that feature was ever added. I hear you on the web interface. I do not like the fact that there is not an in-browser way to use Hangouts for GV. There are plenty of times that I do not have access to use my phone, and also cannot use the Chrome plug-in.

    2. If you login to Google Plus there is a bar on the right hand side of the screen that allows you access Hangouts messages via GV or Hangouts

  5. The GV Web/PC integration is kinda sucky. You can’t search for numbers by name, only by number. Or, if you click on the SMS button for a (temporary) gchat with someone, it doesn’t maintain labels for each phone #.

  6. I’m a simpleton… Why can’t I send an SMS message via the mobile google voice site? Why is this also not working?

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