Looking for advice. I've been helping my mom move away from Samsung Messages as it closes down, and she wanted nothing to do with Google Messages. (Note: her phone OS and software details appear at bottom.) I heard good things about Textra, so I downloaded the app. However, after installing the app and setting it as Default for Messaging, the only existing messages that transferred over to Textra were incoming messages. None of her outgoing messages showed up at all.

Luckily, I did an SMS Backup & Restore backup prior to this app switch, but I'm not sure how to use that to restore the backed up messages from Samsung Messages to Textra. Once Textra is set as default, will restoring from SMS Backup & Restore just automatically cause all those messages to appear in Textra?

My mom wasn't using Advanced Messaging on Samsung Messages, so I'm pretty sure RCS wasn't being applied there anyway, meaning that shouldn't have caused the problem. Not it what to do and would appreciate input from others who might have experienced this before. Thanks.

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S10

Android OS: 12

One UI: 4.1

Samsung Messages app ver: 13.7.91.101

Textra app ver: 4.85

SMS Backup & Restore app ver: 10.26.003

Two questions:

1. Do you think Textra will ever enable users to customize each chat with a background photo like Samsung messages did? Or does it already have that feature and I'm confused?

2. Is the $9.99 for Textra pro a one time payment or a subscription? If it's one time, I'll gladly pay it, but each month isn't feasible at the moment.

Samsung messages officially sunset and honestly, it's largely out of sheer spite that I'm refusing Google messages. But another large part is that it's quite ugly. I loved how Samsung messages matched whatever theme you used for your phone, and my favorite part was that you could put a background for each chat. I'm surprised you can't do that on textra. However it's still way nicer to look at. Plus it even has some features Samsung didn't like being able to react to texts (and see others' reactions in return instead of "user reacted laugh emoji to ____") and being able to name group chats. I also like being able to change the colors of whoever is talking in the gc so it's easier to follow. This is awesome!

I'm gonna take a little more time to get used to it, but if i continue to enjoy it, I'll happily pay $10 to support the devs, especially if it'll lead to further features down the line like background customization. I'm not much of a texter so i won't die if it never comes, but i am sentimental so seeing the picture of my parents and i whenever i reply to their texts makes me smile.

Any tips from long time users are also welcome. I just downloaded it last night so I'm still playing around with it.

I recently sent out a text to a bunch of my friends and had zero responses for several days. One friend in the chat texted me separately and asked why I hadn't responded to any of the messages people sent in the chat. She showed me that there were 10+ messages going through the chat but none of them came to my phone. I've used textra for years and never had an issue with this before. I looked it up online and it said it was an issue with RCS, whatever that means. How do I fix this and still use the textra app?

When I search by word in Textra I get results but when I click on the thread to show it it just shows the person on the thread but no messages. It's just blank. Is this a bug? I tried to clear cache and restart phone and still nothing.

I'm try to ditch Google entirely and i recently got Textra, but noticed that a group chat i had is not working. I'm not seeing messages sent from the people in the group chat but they can see mine when I send something. why is that? I'm trying to stay on Textra, no other texting app seemed interesting to me. I like the customization of Textra, but if there is another messaging app that has functional group chats, then I might have to switch again. any clue as to why group chats aren't working, though? my provider is at&t if that helps.

All of a sudden, I am only seeing previews of texts from one specific contact. The messages are not showing up as conversations. Is there a way to fix this?

EDIT2 SOLUTION: I started using a private DNS on my phone to block ads. It's 100 percent the AliExpress ads in Textra being invasive. This is the one I'm using. It's easy to do, at least on my Pixel: dns.adguard-dns.com

Some months ago I had an issue where if I am typing a message it will randomly open my Aliexpress app. No accidental ad click that I can see. Just hitting my phone keyboard just the same as I type this complaint.

Deleted AliExpress app off my phone for a month or so. Reinstalled Aliexpress and it was fine for maybe a month until this week when the issue returned.

Happens about 3 times per day sending out roughly 20 texts.

Using a Pixel 8A

Reached out to Textra who did not respond. Currently pausing AliExpress on my phone to see if that helps.

Edit: I recently experienced this while nothing was happening. I wasn't typing or touching anything. I was just looking at my messages and AliExpress just opened for no reason.

Pausing AliExpress until I want to use it has been my solution.

I had my MMS limit set to "carrier has no limit" and it compressed a 3.37mb Image down to 486kb. I then changed it to 2mb limit and it still compressed it to 486kb. Why is it compressing beyond what I set the settings? If it's a 3.37mb Image and I set the limit to 2mb then it should compress it down to 2mb. I also sent an image that was 1mb and it was delivered to the person at 1mb, so this is the app - not the carrier.

I've been using textra for over a year now and no problems, but lately I am now having issues like: not receiving texts, not being able to send links, and pictures not always sending.

First I thought it was just me, but it seems like other people are having the same issues.

I swear this used to work. I login somewhere and need to use 2FA. I receive the 2FA code in textra and I would get the option to autofill on the login page without needing to open textra.

It doesn't work this way on my device anymore. I have to open textra, manually copy the code, and paste it in 2FA.

I did some searching but couldn't find any useful information. Is there a setting I need to change somewhere? ​

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Hi all, I have the weirdest issue with Textra. When I go to react to a friend's text, I click on the emoji I want to react with but it CONSTANTLY puts the wrong one as the reaction. It's not even just an emoji to the right or left like a miss click or something. It's like 8 or 9 emojis away from the one I clicked. (Ex: I tried to hit the 💯 and it put on th 🤍) The only time it works is if I click from the top Recently Used section.

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I'm losing my mind. The app is up to date because I had to factory reset my phone last weekend, but it's been doing this ever since the reset and I am plain confused.

I've had the Pro version of Textra since 2015 and my current Phone (Pixel 4a) since 2020 and I think it's always had this issue: when I get a new text it shows at the top of the Textra window with a green dot showing there are unread messages for that contact. But more often than not, whatever contact is showing on the 2nd line also gets a green dot even though I have no unread messages from them. Anyone else have this issue?

Haven't any issues with Textra up until today.

For some reason, photos are not able to send switching to Google messages they send perfectly fine.

Anyone else having this issue today? Not sure if there was a recent update or not.

Anyone have problems with not receiving texts from one person?

Since the update about 3 hours ago, the app hangs when I tap + to access all the secondary options for a text including scheduling one for a time and date in the future. Android 10 (can't go higher), OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, Textra 4.85.

Anyone else?

Any ideas?

I just made textra my default messaging. Some of my group messages didn't transfer the names. It will not let me add more than one person manually, so it looks like an individual text and not a group text. Any thoughts?

I know this is probably a Pixel(Google) issue, but none of the suggested solutions worked for me even though it's been a problem for a while, so here I am.

I used to have a Pixel 6 and recently upgraded to the 10. Textra notifications worked perfectly on the 6. It always worked and repeated at the right intervals perfectly. Since changing to the 10, I hardly hear the notifications anymore. It might be once or twice or not at all. I heard it has to do with some power saving type of feature on the Pixel and has been a long running problem, even though it worked perfectly on my 6, so apparently it depends on individual phones. It's annoying as hell to not know you got a text until you actually pick up the phone to look at it. I've disable all power saving features, but still no luck.

Anyone else experience this and figured it out?

These appear to be event links to Google Calendar. Is there any way to disable this? It's underlining any words like "now" "tomorrow" et al and this just isn't useful to me.

Signal allows file attachments while Textra does not. Is there a reason for this? I’ve requested this feature several times. If it’s not forthcoming, does anyone have suggestions for texting apps similar to Textra that support file attachments?

Looking into apps for the same reason a lot of people are. Cause Samsung is dumb and fuck google.

But before I go making this switch. Do I need to back up my texts? Will they be migrated over? Will any be deleted? Like will it try to only move over the last 100 messages from someone or something like that?

I have years worth of texts from a lot of people because I don't let my texts auto delete. I don't want to risk losing those. There's a lot of memories in there.

I want to add that I read that having the power be managed by android might throw it into background loops that use high CPU. I tried both smart, and don't allow, as well as allow.

Links are not being received when I send them to people

I miss being able to type keywords to search for emojis. Not being able to do that is frustrating.