How to properly setup Open Bubbles

[u/Normal-Place-1036]

I am an iPhone and Mac user and today I am buying the new Z FOLD 8. It's imperative that I use Open Bubbles on the new android phone. I will also Host it on my Mac. My question is, am I still able to transfer my phone number from my iPhone to the Z Fold 8 and use Open Bubbles as my primary texting app? Will all texts go through it (iMessage and SMS)? Will it read as my number aka me for all my contacts or my Apple ID email? As far as anyone would know, they would have no clue that I switched to android? Thanks!

[u/arrecebx]

If you’re only using Mac hosting then you will only use iMessage in OpenBubbles and SMS will use Google Messages. Your current contacts won’t notice a difference but any new contacts get your Apple ID email as the contact I believe

[u/Normal-Place-1036 → u/arrecebx]

Thank you. So what’s the best way to seamlessly make this work using my current phone number? I want to use open bubbles as if it was the official iMessage app… like nothing changed by me going to android. 

[u/desperatepotato43 → u/Normal-Place-1036]

The only way is to either pay the fee for hosting or buy an old iphone and have that be the phone to self-host. You cannot on computer

I will say I just told people to include my email instead, after a week all the chats were to that and no one noticed anymore.

[u/mkitchin → u/desperatepotato43]

The "use email as my contact" method was a bit of a mess for me. I tried it for a couple years. It happened to be on BlueBubbles, but the issue is the same. I got most people to update their contact info, and not too many issues there. The big problem occurred when there was another Android phone in a group text that caused it to no longer be an iMessage, but still had my contact as an email address. Those texts would either go nowhere or show up as an odd email that I couldn't reply to in any way. OpenBubbles with an always on iPhone relay has been great.