Send Free SMS To US Numbers with Firefox

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 18, 2008
Updated • Dec 24, 2013
Firefox, Google Chrome extensions
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3

I don't know how it is in the States but SMS are a phenomena in Europe. It's a very easy and foolproof way to send someone a short message without having to call. The limited space seems to have a huge impact on the language used so that many use abbreviations to squeeze in the message that they want to send.

If you are living in the United States or know a few people over there you might like the Google Send to Phone extension for Firefox that lets you send free SMS to US numbers with Firefox.

The extension will add a cell phone icon after installation in the  browser. If it does not appear automatically, which means that you need to customize the toolbar layout to drag and drop the icon into an appropriate place.

A click on the cell phone icon opens a form where you enter the cell phone number, the carrier and the text that you want to send. Text that has been marked before clicking on the cell phone icon will be automatically entered as the message that will be send.

Not all US phone carriers are supported yet, only the largest are. You can email Google to ask them to include another US-based cell phone provider.

The service could also be used to send, more or less, anonymous SMS. It's not completely anonymous because of server logs but there is no direct connection between the person who is sending the SMS and the phone number that appears on the recipients phone.

Update: Google has discontinued Google Send to Phone for the Firefox web browser. The extension is no longer available, and there does not seem to be a comparable available at this point in time. Chrome users can however use the Chrome to Phone extension allowing them to send links and information from the web browser to Android devices.

Firefox users can use alternatives instead, like the LightSMS extension for the web browser.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on June 2, 2009 at 10:08 pm
    Reply

    Porfavor estoy buscando una pagina pa enviar mensajes desd la web a mobiles en usa ejm: 804982….

  2. Claus Valca said on April 20, 2008 at 12:25 am
    Reply

    Kennii,

    You can get it working in Firefox 3 builds. Just takes some work to get the download location discovered.

    I did this:

    In Firefox 3, browse to the Send to Phone Install page, on the menu bar for Firefox, click “View” then “Page Source.” About mid-way down, find the link (Line 53) in the page code. Copy that URL link then paste it back into the address bar. The installer should kick off. (Easy!)

    You might have to disable add-on compatibility checking (see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Updating_extensions ) for it to work. I’ve already done it on my Firefox 3 builds so I didn’t get any complaints during the installation.

    Or you could just go directly to this link and not do any of that work: http://dl.google.com/firefox/google-sendtophone.xpi

    –Cheers

  3. Asher said on April 19, 2008 at 5:43 am
    Reply

    I tired it and work well, the only problem is that you can only have 95 characters in a sms from them. So for example your artical would take 15 messages to send.

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