Google Voice is a really useful (and free) service from Google that lets you make and receive phone calls without a landline or cell phone.
One of the more useful features in Google Voice is the voicemail feature. It’s a great way to get messages from people through the contact form on your website or just a general number you want to give people to leave you a message without providing it. Give them your real phone number.
In this article, you’ll learn how to set up voicemail on your Google Voice account.
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Don’t have Google Voice yet?
If you like the idea of using voicemail on Google Voice but you don’t have a Google Voice account or phone number, signing up is easy.
- To get started, sign in to your Google Account and visit Google Voice page.
- Option For personal use onlyand select the type of device you want to use (Android, iOS or Web).
- Add your home address or personal phone number (optional).
- Review the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, then select Continue.
- Enter the name of a nearby city and select Option next to the number you want to request.
Follow the on-screen instructions to finish setting up your new number. You can also link this Google Voice phone number to an existing landline or mobile phone number if you want calls to Google Voice to ring that phone as well.
How to set up voicemail on Google Voice
Now that you have your own phone number and Google Voice account, you actually have a voice mailbox that works as part of the account.
However, there are a few things you need to do to set up voicemail so that it works properly.
1. When signed in to your Google Voice account, select gear Setting icon in the upper right corner.
2. In the Settings section, select Voicemail from the menu on the left. This will automatically scroll you down to the Voicemail settings.
3. Voicemail settings have three parts so you can configure exactly how your Google Voice voicemail feature works.
We’ll explore each of these Google Voice voicemail settings in the next section.
Google Voice Voicemail Settings
The first part to consider is Active greetings. You will see two buttons in this section.
- Record your greetings: Select this option to record a new greeting using your microphone. You can record a greeting for up to 3 minutes. Select the stop icon when you’re done. Option Save to save greetings or Rework, do it again to try again. Name your greeting and choose Save again.
- Manage all greetings: This will open a window where you can set any of your recorded messages as your current active message (you can only have one active message at any time). any). To select a message, simply select the three dots to the right of it and select Set is active.
You will always see your current active greeting listed in Active greetings part of Voicemail greetings box.
The second part is Receive voicemail by email box. If you enable this feature, you will receive any new recorded voicemails sent directly to your Google email account. This will be the email address associated with the Gmail account you used to sign up for Google Voice.
The third and final part is Allow Google to analyze voicemail recordings. This is a privacy setting option. Enabling this feature will allow Google to access your voicemail recordings for the purpose of tweaking and improving their voicemail transcription algorithm.
In addition to the settings you’ll find in the Google Voice voicemail settings, there are a few other settings involved in configuring your voicemail.
Google Voice Voicemail Settings
Right above the Voicemail settings there is a Do not disturb box with different voicemail settings.
Enabling this toggle will not forward any of your messages to the phone number you specified for your Google Voicemail account. Instead, it will just redirect all calls straight to voicemail.
This is an option you might want to use if you’re traveling and don’t want to be bothered by calls for a while.
Another voicemail option is further down in the Google Voicemail settings page, towards the bottom. Find the Security section. The Spam filtering is where you can enable spam filtering for three of the features of Google Voicemail – calls, messages, and voicemail.
Enable this toggle to enable this feature. This is especially helpful if you notice that you are receiving a lot of spam or voicemail messages. Google’s anti-spam algorithm is surprisingly effective at blocking these nasty contacts.
More Google voicemail tips
Using Google Voicemail is easy and convenient. When you select Voicemail from the left navigation panel, you’ll access a list of your recent voicemails.
Select any message to view the recording of the voicemail. You can select the play button below this transcript to hear the announcement.
When you select the three dots in the upper right of the message, you’ll see a list of options for what you can do with your voicemail.
The important options here are:
- Find the sender of the message in your Contacts list
- Delete or archive messages
- Mark messages as spam or block numbers
- Download a copy of the message as an audio file
The bottom line is that once you set up voicemail on Google Voice, it should work. It’s also convenient and gives you a place to store incoming calls so you can make them on your own time and on your own schedule.
