And it all works well as long as you are staying inside the Apple world.Īs soon as you try to communicate with a phone outside the Apple world, however, there is only one way for that to work, and that’s to use the much older and more limited SMS messaging system. The iPhone extends texting ability to those two non-phone devices through the iMessage system inside Apple. Neither a Mac nor an iPad has the ability to send or receive text messages, so Apple built the iMessage infrastructure in the Apple ecosystem to get around that. I kept trying to solve the problem from my Mac, but it isn’t a Mac-side issue … it’s an iPhone issue. I was missing a key understanding about this whole thing. I was successfully texting with everyone with my old MBP as well as an iMac, iPad, etc but the new MBP was unable to send to an Android user, giving the identical symptom in this article (red circle, etc).

Thanks.įor anyone else who is struggling with this … this worked for me because I had just bought a new MacBookPro. It must have been the 10th or 20th article I read on the web without any success until this one.

You are done! Send and receive SMS text messages from anyone right from your iPad or Mac.

The number or name that was red before should now be green.

On your Mac or iPad, quit Messages and start it back up again.

Enter the code on your iPhone and press Allow.

Your iPhone will ask you to: “Enter the code shown on your mac to allow iPhone text messages to also be send and received on “Device”, so on your Mac or iPad go open Messages and receive the 6-digit code: XXXXXX.

Turn on the device(s) you would like to use for Text Message Forwarding (Don’t see any device(s)? Make sure you are logged in to your iCloud account on your Mac or iPad).If you are using a Mac, make sure you are running OSX Yosemite (to check go to >About This Mac).Make sure you are on at least iOS 8.1 on your iPhone and/or iPad (to check go to Setting>General>About>Version).Most probably the “Text Forwarding” feature is not turned on to do this: The FIX: Enable “Text Message Forwarding” Macs and iPads with a lower OS than iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite can only receive iMessages, as SMS text messages are limited to the iPhone only. You need to enable this feature in order to use it. This feature is called “Text Message Forwarding” and has been available since iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite. This is because the person you are trying to send a message to either does not have an iPhone or does not have iMessage enabled.ĭon’t worry, Macs and iPads can now SMS text messages.

The number you are trying to send a message to is not using iMessage and your Mac or iPad is attempting to send the message as SMS text message. The Cause: Messages Contact in Red on iPad or Mac

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