TextNow 101: Picture & video messaging with Android

In this instalment of our ongoing TextNow 101 series, we take a look at how you can jazz up your messaging with pictures and videos on devices running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and above. (We’ll have some iOS articles coming soon — stay tuned!)

Previously on TextNow 101, we looked at the “text” part of TextNow. But words are just words — sometimes, you can only truly express yourself in the form of a video of a puppy rolling himself up into a burrito:

Here’s how you can share your love of Burrito Pup using TextNow.

First, let’s open a new message. Tap on the new message icon at the bottom of the TextNow main page to get to a fresh new message page.

Take a closer look at the Type a message field:

If you just want to stick with boring old words, then you can just start typing. But notice the other icons here? Tap on the one that looks like a camera, and you’ll see this:

From here, you have a bunch of options. On the left-hand side of the page, there’s the device camera interface:

Currently, as you can see, my camera on my phone is pointed at my keyboard, mostly to spare you the horror of my very messy desk. To send a picture of whatever your camera is pointing at, tap the circle on the image. Want to send a video of whatever your camera is pointing at instead? Tap and hold the circle to record a short video. And if you want to send a picture or video of your face instead of whatever the phone is pointing at, tap the camera icon in the top left to switch between front-facing and back-facing cameras.

But I don’t wanna send a picture or video, no matter how nice-lookin’ my keyboard is. I wanna send Burrito Pup!

Swipe right on the picture messaging panels, and it will go through the pictures you have saved on your device, like so:

There’s Burrito Pup! I had downloaded the Burrito Pup gif earlier, as any picture or video you send has to be saved onto your device first. Let’s tap on that snugly-wrapped puppy:

You can’t tell from the still image here, but that puppy is totally wrapping itself up like a burrito. Tap send to share the joy of Burrito Pup to a lucky person:

And there we go! You can also do this the other way around, by picking the photo, video or gif stored on your phone’s internal memory or SD card, tapping the Share icon (it’s the one that looks like a “<” sign) and choosing TextNow from the list of places to share.

Stay tuned for future classes in this ongoing TextNow 101 series, and leave us a comment below with suggestions of more articles you’d like to see!

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