Cool App Friday : Flotato (Going Android part 1)

So – as an IT guy, I feel like – getting bored with tech used for years is part of the game. I was a blackberry guy back in the “Storm” days, jumped on Android when the HTC Incredible came out, and landed on the iPhone when the iPhone 6+ Came out. I was stuck on iPhone and other Mac products for 6 or 7 years from that point. Dont get me wrong, I love windows, linux, FreeBSD and even Android – but I needed something polished and iPhone was it.

Recently – as I mentioned above, I got bored and ended up making the switch from my iPhone Xs Max over to the recently released S20 Ultra (Along with a switch from Verizon to TMobile).

Making the Jump.

Mental Conversation I had with myself when I got the s20 : “I got it…. Unboxed…. The s20 Ultra.. Damn she look fine.. Ok, get the iPhone, I have to turn off “find my device” and… oh…. crap… I message.. “

This was the hardest part initially when switching from iPhone over to Android. I do a TON of messaging from my 2018 Macbook pro because its just faster. So this set in motion the process of finding a better way to manage messages across devices – including my Apple products.

Starting with the MacBook Pro
After doing some digging, I found a solution. The Google Messages web page. That worked great, but I dont do browser to system notifications, and I want to be notified when users message me. As well as a dedicated app that I can just open, and let sit in the background without having to hunt through tabs in my open browsers etc…
This is where FLOTATO came in. Flotato is a brilliant little app that works on MacOS only to take almost any website and turn it into an app you can launch just like iMessage. Out of the box it supports a TON of apps natively including Google Messages. Score.

There’s no easy way to provide you a screen shot of what the app looks like once its setup without showing you a ton of my text messages, but it looks VERY similar to iMessage and is simple to setup.

Steps:

Install google messages on your Android phone. I would also remove any other messaging apps to keep the confusion down.
Install flotato on your Mac from https://flotato.com/
Select google messages from the app list
Follow the instructions

BOOM! iMessage for Google.. Well…. Not really, but VERY SIMILAR and it works just fine.

Flotato really has done a great job at taking a web app and converting it over to a local running app (Its in a stripped down browser to be technical, but – it feels local).

Looking for a Windows Version of flotato? No such luck, but WEB TO DESK makes a sick site that does virtually the same thing. More to come on that. For now, check it out:

Flotato: https://flotato.com/
Web2Desk : https://appmaker.xyz/web2desk/