For the mom who gives us everything - Mother's Day gifts that connects us.
The Samsung Galaxy S24
acabtp's profile

Teacher

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18 Messages

Saturday, June 7th, 2014 3:01 PM

how to use AT&T Messages app for voicemail and not texts on Android 4.4+?

Previously, I had happily been using the AT&T Messages app for voicemail and Google Hangouts for my texting.

 

After I upgraded my phone (S4 Active) to the official 4.4.2 that was just released on 6/6, the way that SMS applications are managed is different.  When opening AT&T Messages I am now prompted to set it as my default SMS app, which I DO NOT WANT (not interested in my texts being synced to the cloud, plus the Hangouts interface is far superior).  Without making it the default, you can't even open the AT&T Messages app anymore.  So now I can't see my old voicemails that were in Messages either.

 

I installed the AT&T Visual Voicemail app, but it's terrible by comparison.  No threaded view to group voicemails from the same contact and it does not show any of the older voicemails that I still had in AT&T Messages.

 

So yeah, how do I use AT&T Messages for only my voicemails?  The app was perfectly functional without the SMS permissions on 4.3, no reason other that it can't work the same on 4.4, just lazy programming.

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Former Employee

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36 Messages

10 years ago

***The new firmware update you received was designed to avoid conflicting apps. When you have more than one messaging application going it can cause a conflict. Apparently Google received a lot of feedback about this situation and Samsung so they simplified the process. This feedback comes from other consumes with the Galaxy devices.

Former Employee

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36 Messages

10 years ago

Good Evening!!!

 

AT&T Messages is an awesome product however, the platform is not set up to only allow you to use visual voicemail alone. Its all or none. Here may be a solution for you:

 

Try Youmail in the Play store or Google Voice. You mail is closest to the att messages visual voicemail as it does the same thing and you can setup notifications to have emails sent to you with the message in text. You just have to try it! There are other visual voicemail apps there too. A lot of my customers user YouMail. Also, please ensure that you have disabled att messages so, there is no conflict

 

Here is the link to Youmail in the play store. You can sign into Gmail and install the app directly:

 

https://play.google.com/store

 

[Edited to comply with Guidelines]

 




Teacher

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18 Messages

10 years ago

This is not a useful reply.

Former Employee

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36 Messages

10 years ago

     I am sorry that it is not useful to you, but this is how the application works. Thats why I suggested something different. We value that you love AT&T Message's voicemail application but, the application will not single out one piece of the puzzle because it was designed for all items to work together. I will take the feedback about AT&T Visual Voicemail because maybe we can update the design to reflect how AT&T messages looks. Thats a good idea. 

 

Sorry, but I hope this is a little bit more useful 😞

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