Hangouts dialer no longer working?

Just realized that Google Hangout on the Android phone no longer has a dialer! Is it gone for good?

They want you to use Google Voice now.

Hangouts integration with Google Voice was discontinued on April 1. Google announced this pending change last year. You can no longer use Hangouts to send SMS to/from your Google Voice number. You'll need to use its designated replacement, which is the Google Voice app and the Google Voice website.

When they first mentioned discontinuing, I tried GV for texting but found group texting did not work like Hangouts - did not like it. What are your preferred alternative?

I use group texting on GV, dont really have issues. Dont believe there are alternative apps for texting with google voice

Today, Hangout SMS stopped working. :frowning:

Yep, that's no more. Sad, but true. Thankfully, I have not ran into issues with the GV app.

You should be able to do everything in the GV app that you were able to do in the Hangouts app before it was decommissioned from GV integration.

May be a stupid ? but I'm never sure if there are features I'm ignorant of.
I see that the GV dialer has a "hold" button. What does it do? Can I make 3 way calls by putting call 1 on hold, make call 2 then "un-hold" call 1? I couldn't get it to work that way.
Anything else?

Noticed another thing... a message in Hangouts did not show up on Voice. I only found out about it by logging in to email and seeing it there.

Does MMS work in the GV app?

MMS works for me.

There are a few options for msg. handling / notifications in the GV android app settings. Did you try toggling them on/off?

I am getting messages, just not the one I mentioned. Now that I think of it, I think that was Hangout message (meaning not SMS).

Hm... looking that up, I found another notice!

"Forward your text messages
Important: In light of spam causing potential issues with SMS forwarding, text message forwarding to linked numbers will end in July 2021."

That's interesting. When I first started using GV, I set it up to forward SMS to the linked number: that means sending the SMS to the native text app on the phone, as well as receiving it in the GV app. I turned that off shortly because of dual notifications, and having to visit both apps to clear the notifications.
I haven't had any problems with not receiving texts in the GV app-- but there is always the problem of 'how do you know you missed it, if you missed it'.
GV handling of MMS has improved quite a bit since I first used it.
I've seen other hangouts users commenting about a few things they thought hangouts handled much better than GV.

There are some things that don't work well with GV-- V-Card contact exchange is one of them. I don't know if that worked on Hangouts.