How to get the Mac to receive iMessages sent to a phone number

messages

I love the new messages app on Mountain Lion. Ideally, if another iPhone user sends me an iMessage, I'd like it to appear on both my Mac and iPhone. Currently this only works if someone sends a message to the email associated with my Apple ID.

  • Since Apple does know both my phone number and email, is there a way to have all iMessages appear on my laptop?

  • If not, is my only solution to ask people to text my Apple ID email so it appears on both devices?

Best Answer

Right now OS X Messages can only receive iMessages sent to an email address associated with iMessages. So you'll have to ask people to send to your Apple ID email (or another one if you've got it set up with iMessages) if you want to receive them on your Mac.

There was some talk of Apple ID/phone number unification coming with iOS 6, so that an iPad or Mac could receive iMessages sent to a phone number, but that's not available yet, and from the publicly available information, it doesn't look like it's a sure thing either. However it's a possibility, you may want to pay attention when iOS 6 is released (which looks likely to be in September).