Hangouts drops SMS support (ie. Google Voice)
gtTracy opened this issue · comments
Apparently today is the day that Google Voice SMS support stopped working with Hangouts (at least on my devices). I can no longer compose messages in the Hangouts Android app to SMS correspondents, regardless of new chat or responding to existing chats - and I have not received any SMS messages through Pidgin and purple-hangouts since last night. I can compose and reply to messages in the Google Voice Android app, but Hangouts no longer seems to have an option to integrate these SMS messages.
While I realize that Hangouts is migrating (toward Google Chat, if I recall correctly), it appears that Google Voice SMS support is not migrating there, at least not at this time.
With that in mind, is there any plan at this point to develop a plugin that will support Google Voice, or is there an already existent plugin that I have missed in my searches? I know there was some talk here (back in 2017) about the possibility of developing a Google Voice plugin, but I don't see that anything ever came of it.
Seconded. I figured this'd happen, and the new Google Chat isn't looking to re-integrate the feature. For those of us who liked doing our google-number texting in Pidgin, there is currently no option. Also just me or is the Voice website sound notificationless? I like my bloops! Go figure Google's like "no April Fools because COVID" and the real joke is this.
There's a few possibilities I can think of: purple-hangouts will become purple-gchat and only have the features of Chat available; a Voice plugin may or may not be made; said Voice plugin may or may not support actual calls on Linux; OR hypothetical purple-gchat could implement Voice SMS alongside Chat support into the same plugin as it's using the same account and I believe oauth, but I'm sure that wouldn't make the project easier.
Such a shame Google does this in cycles to their long-term users.
I had started to move myself off google services about 5 years ago. This will be one of the final nails in the google coffin. If someone knows of an alternative to google voice/hangouts which would integrate into Bitlbee for SMS/Chat I'd be happy to hear about it.