quietlife.net

google voice & iPhone forwarding

05 Aug 2009

So, I got my beta invite to google voice a few weeks ago. It looked pretty slick, but as far as I could tell, it was built around the assumption that you would give out your new google voice number to people to use as your primary number – google voice could then forward it to your cellphone from there. Well, I’ve had the same phone number for like 12 years, so I have no intention of changing.. So I let my google voice account sit around unused.. until now. It occurred to me that I could of course forward my cell phone to google voice. However, on my iPhone, if you go to Settings -> Phone, the “Forwarding” is either on or off.. either it forwards all calls right off the bat or not at all,which is not what I want. I want to get actual calls on my phone but have it forward to google voice if I don’t answer.

Apparently this is possible, it’s just not accessible via the iPhone/AT&T settings interface. I found this handy reference:

Immediate Call Forwarding: Dial *21* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.
Busy Call Forwarding: Dial *67* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.
Call Forwarding No Reply: Dial *61* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.
Call Forwarding Not Reachable: Dial *62* plus the 10-digit number to which your calls should be forwarded and #. Press Send.

So, by using *67*, *61*, *62*, I now have all voicemail from my cellphone going right to google voice. Pretty sweet. Downside to this? Voicemail is no longer accessible right from the iPhone voicemail interface. And, although Google Voice will e-mail you a transcript of the VM, it doesn’t email a WAV of the actual message – merely a link to a google.com/voice URL where you can listen to it. Incidentally, for some reason, this link yields a 404 when accessed via my iphone. So, it would appear that actually listening to voicemail on google voice via my iPhone may be a problem with this setup.. Not sure if I can hang with that.. Interesting to toy with, though..

Comments

fishwreck — August 05, 2009 at 15:46 · reply

You can access GV voice messages by dialing your GV number from your iPhone (or any other number to which you have GV forwarding) and entering your PIN.

I use my GV number primarily to give out to businesses that need my number – utilities, mechanic, dentist, etc. – and new people I meet that I don’t know well but ask for contact info. Everyone else still calls me direct and I’m fine with that.

cwage — August 05, 2009 at 15:47 · reply

Oh, sweet, so that takes care of that problem too..

Daniel — August 05, 2009 at 17:19 · reply

also found this to be helpful to prevent callers from having to wait through 4 rings on your phone and then 4 rings on GV…

Dial **61*+1xxxyyyzzzz*11*30# and hit Send. +1xxxyyyzzzz is your GV number. 30 is the delay in seconds. The delay can be set in 5 second increments, 30 is maximum.

David — August 05, 2009 at 19:07 · reply

My Google Voice account is sitting around totally unused too for the exact same reasons. I like your solutio.. I gotta figure out how to do the forwarding thing with Verizon, all I’ve been able to find is how to forward ALL my calls.

Laura Creekmore — August 09, 2009 at 12:18 · reply

I have been sharing my number in limited ways for a similar reason. For almost all personal and business calls, I use 615.500.4131 and I have for YEARS. So everyone knows it. My family, however, will often try me at home and then my cell phone or vice versa. And often, I am AT HOME and just can’t get to the phone. And all those phones ringing when I am too busy to answer just sends me over the edge.

However, there’s a downside to their using Google Voice for me too. When they call and I’m NOT at home, someone else gets the call. I also need to figure out if we can disable call waiting on our home phone – the other day Ashby was on an important call, and my mom was trying to reach me via Google Voice.

Not perfect, but sometimes helpful is my final verdict.

Josh — January 06, 2010 at 15:18 · reply

If your iphone is jailbroke, you can load the google voice app on it, which solves all of the issues with easily checking your GV vm. IPhone + GV Mobile App = awesome.

Vascodeplaya — November 29, 2011 at 15:59 · reply

How do I unforward???  I just tried it out to see if it worked, and sure enough it does, but now I cannot figure out how to go back to normal, HELP!

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