Google Voice

FIRST-HAND READS

What people reported, in their own words. Every line links to where it was said.

• “use a Google Voice number as my MFA and it has worked fine for many years”

  POSITIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2026-07-05

• “port that phone number to Google Voice (GV). Then you no longer need you phone service in the USA. All accounts (banks, etc) tied to that number will work while your abroad. GV is internet based. And, your can always port it back when you go back home.”

  POSITIVE · features · Reddit · 2026-06-18

• “Then lost access to the google voice number because I never used it for anything else.”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2026-06-10

• “The Google voice chat integration in android auto is vile currently.”

  NEGATIVE · ease of use · Hacker News · 2026-05-12

• “you can't use your Google Voice number for 2FA account verification when signing up for another Google service”

  NEGATIVE · features · Hacker News · 2026-05-11

• “google voice's sms in the web app will take shift+enter but fail and just submit half the time anyway”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2026-05-05

• “Those were my 3 use cases for Google voice, and it failed them all enough I just stopped using it all together.”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2026-05-01

• “My Google Voice number is the only phone number I've used for 15+ years”

  MIXED · features · Hacker News · 2026-04-01

• “I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA after a nightmare scenario where I realized that the mobile carriers are entirely susceptible to social engineering”

  MIXED · features · Hacker News · 2026-04-01

• “The only challenging part was using a Google Voice number for the account because there was an issue with the way I had created the business Apple account.”

  NEGATIVE · ease of use · Hacker News · 2026-03-30

• “many Canadian financial institutions (including the CRA, Wealthsimple, and BMO) work fine with US phone numbers for 2FA… including Google Voice, in my personal experience”

  POSITIVE · Hacker News · 2026-02-25

• “I can't use my Google Voice for a decent chunk of sign-ups because it is detected (and rejected) too easily”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2026-02-25

• “it's weird how bad sms messaging on Google Voice is, still. Messages get filtered more often by the carriers. Shows up to them as voip local numbers which is highest risk of spam. In any case it was bolted on almost as an afterthought.”

  NEGATIVE · performance · Hacker News · 2026-01-21

• “Been using Google Voice for _years_ and it's only gotten worse.”

  NEGATIVE · performance · Hacker News · 2026-01-04

• “lots of services require SMS authentication and won't accept Google Voice/similar”

  NEGATIVE · features · Hacker News · 2025-12-15

• “Google voice is convenient for viewing them myself on my desktop, phone, tablet”

  MIXED · features · Hacker News · 2025-12-12

• “I switched from T-Mobile to Google Voice a few years ago for this reason”

  MIXED · price · Hacker News · 2025-10-29

• “I need to text myself on Google Voice every few months or they're gonna delete the number I use for 2FA on critical services”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2025-09-13

• “The bigger problem with Google Voice is that Google's email gateway for SMS is awful. It cuts off outgoing messages after two carriage returns, strips out single carriage returns, and won't send me group messages, instead sending me a link to the message, and even that only rarely, usually not even notifying me that I received a group message.”

  NEGATIVE · features · Hacker News · 2025-08-30

• “I use Google Voice, so that I can read and send SMS messages from a computer, and can keep the same address even when switching phone lines. There's other providers that offer the same service for a few dollars a month, which I wouldn't mind paying”

  LUKEWARM · features · Hacker News · 2025-08-22

• “my google voice number still functions after all these years”

  MIXED · reliability · Hacker News · 2025-07-25

• “In the Google Voice was the cell number I'd had all my life. Two decades of emails, documents, conversations, and contacts lost forever through no fault of my own.”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2025-07-18

• “I just use a headset connected to PC for Google Voice with a free (in the US, at least) number and don't even see when calls come in unless they leave a message or I know someone's going to call and I leave a Google Voice tab open”

  LUKEWARM · features · Hacker News · 2025-06-24

• “Since I had ported my childhood cell # into google voice, I couldn't access SMS MFA, and thus was locked out”

  NEGATIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2025-05-19

• “I use my Google Voice number for everything and have rarely had any issues”

  POSITIVE · reliability · Hacker News · 2025-05-14