Can you change your number on google voice

While Google Voice is a free service to all users with an active Gmail account, most people don’t know that you can port your cell number to the service for a small fee.

Did you know that your phone number belongs to you? According to the FCC, you have the right to keep your phone number when you change providers, which means that so long as you have a provider, you can keep your number.

But if you’re in the same situatin I was last year and being inundated with 10–30+ spam calls per day, you’re probably thinking about ditching your number for a new one to get away. Enter Google Voice.

Google Voice is a free service available to anyone who has a Gmail account. It’s aimed at folks who want a second line, or a line dedicated to intercepting calls that you don’t want to take on your personal line (for example, a second line for your business, or craigslist selling/buying). For a small fee of $20, you can use Google Voice to port your current number and escape the spam.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Go to voice.google.com and sign in with your gmail account. Sign up for a number if you don’t already have one.

Step 2: Go to Settings by clicking the cog/settings button on the top right:

Step 3: In settings, look for the box that shows your current Google Voice number.

Step 4: Click “change/port”

Step 6: It will ask you if you want a new number or you want to use your current mobile number. Choose to use your current mobile number.

Step 7: You need to go through the process of letting the system check for eligibility to port the number. As a note: if you have a contract with your current provider, your number may be locked to that provider for the duration of your contract.

Step 8: Provided your number is eligible to port (which should be most numbers, given that most US cellphone companies have largely stopped locking customers into contracts), you simply have to go through a wizard process to check portability and kick off the transfer.

Step 9: Pay $20 to port your number to Google Voice, and provide account information

Setting Up Google Voice & Notifying Your Friends

The porting process can take 24–36 hours to complete, but there are things you need to be aware of during this process. Firstly, if you do this on an active phone line, the phone company will treat it as if you have cancelled service (since they get notified to port the number to Google). You’ll be on the hook for any prorated charges or equipment you may owe back to them. I would recommend choosing a new phone number or cellular provider before doing this to avoid service interruptions.

What about everyone who already has your old number? I recommend that you download the Google Voice app on your smartphone and sign in using your Gmail login. This will allow you to get notifications for any texts or calls that come in, or even turn on/off call forwarding, though you will likely want to throw that in “do not disturb” mode in order to truly avoid the spam.

Once you’re all setup, you can navigate to the voice mail part of the app or website and record a new greeting.

What I did was record a message that simply says “hey, you’ve reached my old number, reach out to me to get my new one”. You probably don’t want to leave your new number on the old voice mail. Lots of services that make spam calls use bots that can very easily listen to voicemail and extract new phone numbers to call, which would defeat the whole purpose of going through this process. Assuming that your friends have another means to reach out to you (Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, etc), they should be able to let you know they need your new number.

Of course some of your friends & family are probably going to want to know how you got a new number while keeping your old one, so you can just send them a link to this post as an explainer :]