IssueTracker

This is really important for me as I do not have a text messaging plan through my provider.  This is the only place in the OS that I'm aware of where I do not have the option to route SMS messages through Google Voice.

This seems like a no brainer

It may not as trivial as you might think. Since the Messaging app is built in with the OS, the OS assumes that every device has it (an assumption you can't make with Google Voice). Therefore, the Phone app sends an intent directly to the Messaging app to send the message. If you disable the Messaging app, the quick response still claims to have sent a message, but it actually doesn't get sent. Even if you made it to where the Google Voice app caught the intent, the app would have to implement a service that would automatically send the message and not wait for a "send" button press like it usually does. I don't think the Google Voice app has a service like that yet. I think this will be more of a Google Voice app change than an OS change.

@ Craig / Comment 3 about not being trivial:

It actually should be trivial! Hit the microphone in the new search bar in Ice Cream Sandwich, and say "text John, hello".
Then it will prompt you to send the text with Messaging or with Google Voice (and a checkbox to make it default). I set Google Voice and checked the box to make it default. It didn't open google voice in an odd fashion, it sent the text behind the scenes and gave a notice (called a toast) that the text was sent.

This was a generic intent that worked with both messaging and GV. And yes, it worked without popping up GV with a prefilled message and the need to press the send button.  It sent it completely behind the scenes. I'm pretty surprised because when I was developing an app in Froyo, I could not find an intent that would send through GV behind the scenes, but this exists now! Either GV has updated since or the OS (or both). The quick responses / dialer app just needs to modify the intent to be the same intent that voice actions uses.

You had my hopes up but unfortunately, setting gv as the default for text didnt work for me.  I just got errors saying that the texts could not be sent. Anyone else get this to work?

@Royal20
Hmm, good point. So basically, the feature of Google Voice that I said needed to be implemented already is, it's just the quick response/dialer app doesn't send out that type of intent. Well, knowing that, I agree, this sounds like an OS feature that they missed while implementing quick responses.  Thanks for checking it out. Time to spread the word and get people to star this issue so they'll be sure to fix it!

I did some digging...

The phone apk uses an activity called RespondViaSmsManager for the quick response

Source is here: https://github.com/android/platform_packages_apps_phone/blob/master/src/com/android/phone/RespondViaSmsManager.java

Line 296, you can see the intent it uses to send the sms "com.android.mms.intent.action.SENDTO_NO_CONFIRMATION"

Obviously it is using the mms app directly so there is no way GV will pick it up

--
Now we know VoiceSearch handles the sms sending correctly

Unfortunately VoiceSearch is proprietary and no source is available.. but I still dug into my logcat and also did some disassembling of the apk.

The activity to send the sms in the log is

com.google.android.voicesearch.actions.SendSmsAction

This is called with the recipient and message values.
This activity then calls the intent.
The log shows an intent:
with action: android.intent.action.SENDTO
data: smsto:numberhere
and some shortcuts

further down in the log you see this activity/intent:
com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.action.AUTO_SEND

At first I thought this was GV picking up on the generic intent once it was chosen from the Activity Resolver (the prompt where you choose to send with Messaging or GV)

However, even when Messaging is selected, that intent shows up in the log.

I then disassembled VoiceSearch.apk and .odex
The AndroidManifest.xml contained
com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.action.AUTO_SEND
Which means it picks up on this very intent and calls SendSMSAction (within VoiceSearch.apk)
Note this intent shows up in the logs no matter which SMS app you choose.

If you choose Google Voice, you also see this in the log:
com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.sms.SmsAutoSendsActivity
And this is the activity within Google Voice that actually sends the SMS!
If you choose messaging, you will not see that activity starting up.
And the intent that starts this activity, according to GV's manifest is:
com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.action.AUTO_SEND (same as the intent used in Voice Search)

--

Looking into disassembled jar code in Voice Search,
It seems it's not just a simple 1 line intent to send the SMS.. there's much more.

It uses SmsManager http://developer.android.com/reference/android/telephony/SmsManager.html
to send the message.. first using getDefault() and then actually sends with the sendMultipartTextMessage() method.

Having no experience with SmsManager and not knowing how it works, I'm not exactly sure whether getDefault() prompts to get Google Voice / Messaging, and then the sendMultipart sends based on the one chosen by forwarding an intent. Or if I'm looking at this the wrong way and voicesearch sends out the googlevoice intent, but if google voice is not there or not chosen, then voicesearch picks up on the intent itself and uses smsmanager to send the sms through the normal carrier sms. I'm guessing the latter is what's happening.

Long story short - It's definitely longer than 1 line, but it can be done, and the people working on Phone.apk should talk to the people working on VoiceSearch.apk and this will be solved quickly.

So I looked into the googlevoice code again and just noticed in the SmsAutoSendActivity it does a check:
if ("com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.action.AUTO_SEND".equals(((Intent)localObject1).getAction())) && (this.activityHelper.getCallingPackage().equals("com.google.android.voicesearch")))

Note the last part... it seems Google wants the ability to autosend sms to ONLY come from voice search :(

That's possibly for security reasons. An app wouldn't have to use the SEND_SMS permission, but could use that functionality to send text messages under the hood without the user knowing.

So looks like this fix is two-fold. First, the com.android.phone app needs to use a generic intent instead of the specific "com.android.mms.intent.action.SENDTO_NO_CONFIRMATION" one. Then the Google Voice app needs to add a check to allow a call from com.android.phone.

[Comment deleted]

If you select 'Custom message ...' from the list, it allows choosing Google Voice.  Unfortunately, this does not change how the pre-defined responses work (they continue to go to the native messaging app).

I would also be very interested in this. It's a great feature, but not very usable for me at the moment since a) I pay per SMS if I send the normal way, and b) I give people my GV number, not the number my phone actually has, so some recipients would probably be very confused when they saw an unfamiliar number pop up in their inbox.

I'll keep this short since I'm not a developer or knowledgable being that can disassemble code to find it's faults, but I appreciate your help in this matter. I find it bizarre that this functionality was overlooked. It seems, by reading this thread, the proper handlers/intents are there, however it wasn't introduced. Again, Thank You!

Well the proper intents aren't really there. The Google Voice developers put a special intent that can only be used exclusively by the Voice Search app. I suspect Craig (comment 9) is right about them doing this for security reasons.

A complete solution would have been to require a permission like "uses you Google services -> Can send messages through Google Voice" and then they can open the intent up to any app with that permission. Unfortunately they somewhat half-assed it and gave a workaround solution to make it work with Voice Search.

So to get this working, the Google Voice app first needs a lot of changing and needs to provide a proper and public interface, in one of 3 ways:

1. A general text message intent (best solution)
2. A specific Google Voice intent that can be used by misc apps (maybe they can implement the permission system as well)
3. Modify the if statement to allow the intent to be sent from the Phone app (weakest solution but would take them 5 seconds to do)

Once one of these three options is done, only then can the phone app be modified to interface with Google Voice.

How this option was not and still is not available completely baffles me. seriously,I question Google's workers sometimes. Google voice is so heavily implemented from even sending a text through search key and it being defaulted to it, to my galaxy nexus now having it in the recent calls box and yet quick response is not used??

With the new integration of GV into ICS for displaying/playing VMs directly from the call log, I can only hope that it is a matter of when, not if, they integrate GV into the Quick Response feature.

How does this take over 3 months?

Louis Ng | 818.804.8862 | Louis.Ng@Gmail.com

Well it seems Google Voice is not a big priority for Google right now.

If you look at the Hong Kong event where ICS and Galaxy Nexus were announced in October, the Google Voice voicemail integration with ICS was already demoed! They've been sitting on their hands until last week.

So we may be waiting a while until quick response is addressed, if ever.

Just got a new phone with ICS and this is one of the main things I'd like to see. Hopefully they will add it soon.

I'm about to write another app that allows a user to send text messages. Based on the comments here, is it correct to say the text messages won't be sent with Google Voice? This is impossible right now?

Text apps usually provide an option of normal text or google voice. Quick response is a built in function that Google assigns directly to text.

@Comment 20
No. This issue is dealing with Google Voice not being able to send text messages silently without confirmation of any kind, which is required for the desired behavior of this quick response feature. If your app is simply going to send text messages, I believe there is a specific Intent you can create for your purposes.

Just to voice in, as well. Comment 22 is correct. The intent to send in the background with no confirmation is closed off for whatever reason.

The intent to send text through google voice with pre-filled data, that the user actually has to click send from within google voice is available. I'm sure of this, because I've developed an app that does this. Note that it is not the intent that you see in most "send text" examples online or in the documentation, it is a more general "share" intent that many apps pick up.

Yeah, I was looking for background, not the intent. Thanks for the clarification.
** SORRY TO GET THIS ISSUE SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC, although this does appear to be the main problem. **

Is there a way to populate both the number and message to send text message via Google Voice. I cannot seem to find an intent that works. The intents i have tried either populate the  phone number or populate the message. Can someone point me in the right direction? I am not asking for auto-send, i am asking for a more standard or expected behavior to send SMS via intent.

Still waiting on this, even in Jelly Bean, it would appear.

Jelly Bean actually made this worse. It used to be that you had the option to send a custom text from google voice. Now that's gone.

Just wanted to say I have the same issue, and can confirm comment #27. Google, if you see this, please fix! It seems like you want GV to be a big part of the Android experience, yet you're not allowing us to use the full functionality of the phone as intended, if we do use GV!

Please fix this. Need to sent all texts via GV.

It seems to be an issue with the GV intent. Texts via GV aren't being sent when using the new 4.1 Google Now voice action either.

[Comment deleted]

Could all of you who are having this issue, please check and see if you're also having this issue: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=34175 ? Where SMS/TXT's don't send when sent via command to Google Now/Voice Search? Make sure to star that one if you are as well. It seems several items of GV integration were missed in Jellybean.

I consider this a bug, not a feature request - I use GV as my primary number so when I tried using the quick response feature today my friend wrote back asking who this was...and of course I was charged by my provider for both the outgoing and incoming texts.

What is the point of setting a default SMS application if the system is going to bypass it?

I second that point (and also second #32). I've been hit by this a few times myself, and while I thankfully didn't get pinged monetarily, I think a flaw that can cost users money is definitely a bug, and definitely not merely "medium" priority.

I 3rd it.... WHY IS IT TAKING THEM SO LONG TO FIX THIS????

It's been almost a full year...  WT%

Bump.  I guess I have to learn the android kernel and fix this myself...

Bump.  

And (at risk of forum violation) I can't get Google to deal with very buggy voice commands not recognizing Contacts.  Anyone got a suggestion how to get that fixed?

I think that we can all agree that Google Voice is a neglected product.
*Hopefully* when Google merges together their various text communication apps (sms via gvoice, sms via text messaging app, gtalk, google+ messenger), this sort of issue will also be addressed as a result. Until then gvoice is hamstrung on android, let alone on other platforms.

#39 Google Voice is by far the lowest quality app Google has produced for Android in my opinion.  Hopefully what you say will happen and the products will be merged into one high quality one.

#38 I have had problems with contact recognition as well lately.  As a work around, if I say only the first name of the contact, it will be recognized properly and then I will be presented a list of all the contacts with that first name that I can then choose from on the screen.

@38 this website is for issues with AOSP Android not Google apps such as Google Voice. Please report your issue to "Google mobile help forum" where there are dedicated forums for each Google app - you are much more likely to get a response there.

Thanks, hbls00...  Have already documented the voice commands issues here:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/JlSkbF8RRyU

Have had a couple of Googlers reply in that forum saying "I'm going to look into this problem" and then they never come back again.  Very frustrating - and wondered if someone in this forum might understand how to get their attention better.  (Again, recognizing this isn't strictly appropriate to this forum's purpose, please forgive me)

Google made a big deal about how great Voice Commands was going to be in Android... and it kindof sucks because it's so unreliable.

@ #38 & #42 (knw...)
You're continuing a discussion of an issue completely unrelated to this issue. I understand both issues are frustrating because they are both being ignored. But it won't do you any good to bring your ignored issue into another ignored issue. And it won't do this issue any good to go off topic.

This isn't a hang out and discuss random things kind of forum - it's intended for the issue listed at the top. So please, let's keep discussion to this issue.

Back on topic...

Assuming #7 and #8 are still correct, two things need to happen in tandem to fix this issue entirely:

0. The Android Open Source Project implementation of the Phone app, specifically Quick Response, needs to be updated. "The com.android.phone app needs to use a generic intent instead of the specific com.android.mms.intent.action.SENDTO_NO_CONFIRMATION' one."

1. The Google Voice app needs to add a check to allow a text message from com.android.phone to be sent without confirmation.

But, this issue could be fixed halfway by just implementing item 0, and then the user could select any SMS app, leaving the user to confirm the Quick Response (making it less quick, but at least functional).

More Google voice integration would be great.

I would also like this capability, and it doesn't seem like it should be that hard to do. PLEASE IMPLEMENT in 5.0

I have been frustrated by this for the past year or so. If you want people to use GV exclusively why would you leave something broken for another product to swoop in and take the market? Maybe Google Voice will be rolled in with Google Babel and will take care of this?

So today my Google Chat for Chrome (I'm on the Chrome beta v27.x) became Hangouts (G+).  When I answered an incoming phone call, it took place in a Hangout.  Outgoing calls via Google Talk seems to be broken though - gotta make those with a GMail window open for now I suppose.  Seems Google is going to merge the Google Voice service with Google+.

I guess now we know why they were dragging their feet on this one. Does Hangouts now become the focus on this feature?

SMS/GV integration with Hangouts is coming. The GV team is now under the Hangouts umbrella. They had a tough choice, release now with what they have and try and make up some lost ground, or wait until the integration is complete and release the fully functional version. I don't mind that they chose to release now. Gives them some immediate feedback and allows them to improve the program while the work on full integration. This is only a guess but I think Hangouts will be significantly improved by next years IO.

This report applies to a mobile Google application or service, and the issue tracker where you reported it specializes in issues within the Open Source source code of the Android platform.

We are not able to provide support for Google products in this issue tracker. Please report this issue in the appropriate Google Product Forum at https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/en/

This was opened in 2011 and that's the response, years later?  You gotta be kiddin' me!

I disagree with the WrongForum status. From what I understand of the issue, it's the fact that Android doesn't have an available hook to give other SMS providers the availability to be the quick response handler. That makes it an Android issue.

Correct, the quick reply with a text option should fire an intent for a text that can be filtered for by other texting apps.

Unsubscribing -- Google Voice will be merged into Hangouts (in some fashion) and given that it appears they are doing final bug fixing on this (otherwise why would someone bother to comment on a year-old bug) I'm going to wait until that happens to care any more.

More about Google Voice and Hangouts: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/akN5ZTo7vUo

I agree with #53/54

There is nothing that could be "fixed" in Google Voice to make this work. Its completely an Android Platform issue. Unless #51 (j...@android.com) is telling us they HAVE fixed it on there end? Is this true #51 (j...@android.com). Since you believe this isn't a Android issue can you explain how to setup an alternative SMS service to be used with QuickReply?

Is there any recourse that we have here? The issue is already considered to be closed by the developer and considering that it took them a year and a half to respond to it the first time, I'm betting that they're not going to be checking back here very often.

There's no chance of getting someone to respond, it's not like anyone has been responsive to this point, and now they consider it closed. Useless...

Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the necessary "hooks" already exist for SMS? How else could third-party SMS apps work? My understanding is that GVoice does things differently, perhaps because it's not actually using SMS. Is there some reason GVoice couldn't grab those SMS intents? If there isn't anything stopping them, it definitely is a Google problem, and not an Android problem.

Proof that this is an Android problem and not a Google problem:

1) Install a 3rd party text messaging application (I used "QuickTouch Text Messaging")
2) Open it and configure
3) Ignore an incoming call with a quick response

In the above scenario, IF the intent did exist in Android, it would prompt me and ask me which text messaging application I wanted to send the quick response with.  It did not, it just sent it with the stock app.

This seems to illustrate that SMS intents exist, HOWEVER, the required intent(s) for quick responses DO NOT exist.

I have also noticed other places throughout Android where intents are missing.  Sharing a contact, for example, is another place where 3rd party text messaging apps (including Google Voice) do not show up.

#60 definitely seems to confirm this as an Android problem, if the phone app is part of the open source Android code.

It's almost like we've entered the Twilight Zone and we've started dealing with Apple instead of an open source project.  "You're holding the phone wrong!  If you hold it right, it will work fine."

Find a new post that asks for SMS intent(s) here:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=56090

#55 - "and given that it appears they are doing final bug fixing on this (otherwise why would someone bother to comment on a year-old bug)"

Actually, I'm subscribed to several issues and 4 of them were closed today/yesterday with similar wrongforum, etc statuses. I think they're just doing clean up.

Does anyone know if there is a workaround for this issue?

use CyanogenMods voice+ app

@Nephi - that doesn't work for someone like me that has a locked bootloader (ATT Moto X) :(

+1 Been on CM11M5 (hammerhead), Voice+ integration is seamless, except for of-course short-codes...

Or if you use Xposed there's a module that pretty much gives you Cyanogen
Mod's Voice+ without cyanogenmod.

Moto plugged that hole with the 4.4.2 update. Which Moto forced down my throat one night without me asking.

Still appears broken in lollipop, even with the voice / hangouts integration enabled.

@72: What if you set Hangouts to automatically reply via the last method used to contact that person?  I would think this should work even without an Android fix.

It does. Even from my moto 360 :)

@ comment #73: where do you access that setting in Hangouts? Can't find it at first peek in the settings for each account I have in there.

It doesn't actually work with that setting. I think it's because a
completely different api is used for quick responses, as well as Google
Voice Search and android wear. All those will send a text with the mobile's
phone number and not Google voice.

A fix for this would be very nice to have.

@76 Above and beyond Google Voice / Hangouts integration, is Hangouts your default SMS app?  Those of us with stock Android (Nexus devices, etc.) don't have another stock messaging application anymore, so it really wasn't an issue.  Make sure you're receiving normal SMS in Hangouts.

I'm on a Nexus 5 and it doesn't work for me. The quick responses get sent with Hangouts, sure, but they get sent from my device's number rather than my Google Voice number. No matter what the "send SMS from" setting is set to, the quick responses come from my device number.

Admittedly, I haven't tried it yet on my Nexus 5.  I guess I'll try that later and let you all know.

Hangouts is my default SMS. I just replied to a call with a quick response. When I open Hangouts and look at the texting section i see my message and it says it was sent "via SMS". Had it used Google Voice it would say "via Google Voice".

The setting mentioned on #73 is located in Hangouts / Settings / SMS / Send SMS from. You can pick smart reply (reply from last number used), Google Voice number or your mobile phone number. When you choose Google Voice number as I have, you get an alert saying it won't necessarily work if you send the message from someplace outside of Hangouts. This sounds like what we are doing with Quick Responses -- they're created outside of Hangouts.

[Comment deleted]

@80 Ah--good find.  Oh well--I guess it's still broken.

In case you're like me and didn't notice: this issue was listed as closed in May 2013 because it was in the Wrong Forum.

There is an open version of this issue here:

"Provide an intent for Quick Responses so other applications can be used to send the reply."
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=56090

So you may want to follow that issue instead of this one.

Thanks, I just completed reading.

When is Google going to merge RMS with Google voice and Hangouts? Does the hangouts team even show up to work anymore?

If you need someone to test for you, I would love to help.

(Otherwise, I'm not sure why I got this notification.)

On Wed, Sep 4, 2024, 4:07 PM <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote: