How To Forward SMS To Email On Android With WizeSMS

Written by the Fulldive product engineering team, based on direct inspection of the repositories listed below.

Forwarding SMS to email on Android, without a cloud relay

If you want to know how to forward SMS to email on Android, the short answer is: a dedicated SMS app has to be set as the default SMS handler, read incoming messages locally, and send them to an email address you control. WizeSMS (previously Dive SMS, package com.fulldive.extension.divesms) does exactly that, and it does it with Gmail OAuth so you never paste a password into the app.

This guide walks through the setup, the failure modes, and the privacy tradeoffs you should weigh before turning it on. It is grounded in the WizeSMS repository’s 2025-2026 forwarding commits, not a marketing page.

What the app actually does on the device

WizeSMS is a full Android SMS/MMS client first and a forwarder second. When you set it as the default SMS app, it receives incoming SMS and MMS from the Android telephony provider (see the Android telephony provider docs), stores them locally, and — if you opt in — sends a copy to a destination you configure.

The forwarding feature shipped in a focused run of commits at the end of 2025:

dd629f2f added SMS to email forwarding with Gmail OAuth, so authentication happens through Google’s consent screen rather than via an app password.
4c1ec87b added a dedicated forwarding settings screen so email and Telegram destinations, toggles, and rules live in one place.
150204e5 added a send test message button for email, so you can confirm a delivery before relying on it.
a53b2673 added forwarding status and failure notifications, so a broken forward is visible instead of silent.
42f44224 added a privacy note in the forwarding UI because forwarding sensitive messages is a privacy decision, not a throwaway toggle.

Forwarding is off until you turn it on. Nothing in the repository suggests otherwise.

Step-by-step: forwarding SMS to your email

Install WizeSMS from the app listing on the Fulldive apps page.
Set WizeSMS as your default SMS app when Android prompts you. Android routes new SMS and MMS only to the default SMS handler (see the SMS intents reference); without this step the app cannot read incoming texts.
Open Forwarding settings (the screen added in 4c1ec87b).
Choose Email as a destination.
Complete the Gmail OAuth consent flow (added in dd629f2f). The app will request the scope it needs to send mail on your behalf. Review what Google shows you on that screen; that is the ground truth.
Use the Send test message button (150204e5) to confirm end-to-end delivery before you rely on the forward.
Optionally, configure which conversations or senders should be forwarded so you aren’t flooding your inbox with every text.

If a forward fails, WizeSMS will raise a failure notification (a53b2673) rather than fail silently. That matters when you’re using forwards for alerts you cannot miss.

What “default SMS app” means in practice

Some users are surprised that an SMS forwarder has to replace their messaging app. On Android, that is by design. The default SMS role is what grants an app permission to receive incoming SMS/MMS broadcasts. WizeSMS shows a default SMS warning banner (3838a63b) if it isn’t set as default, because without that role forwarding simply cannot work.

For a deeper explainer, see our post on why Android SMS apps need default-app permissions.

Privacy tradeoffs

Forwarding SMS to email changes your security model. Before you turn it on, think through this:

Your inbox becomes part of your auth surface. If you forward OTPs or banking alerts, any attacker with access to your email now has access to those messages too. That is true whether the destination is Gmail, Outlook, or a self-hosted IMAP server.
Two-factor codes lose some of their “something you have” value when they arrive in an email account that is itself protected only by a password. Strong email 2FA (hardware key or an authenticator app) partially mitigates this.
Gmail OAuth is better than a pasted app password, but it still grants the app permission to send mail on your behalf. Review the consent screen and revoke access in your Google account settings if you stop using WizeSMS.
WizeSMS includes an in-app privacy note (42f44224) for a reason: the team wanted users to see the tradeoff at the moment of opt-in.

For a deeper look at the OTP question specifically, read forwarding OTPs and verification codes: what you’re actually doing.

Reliability: why this is an SMS app, not just a forwarder

A forwarder is only useful if the underlying SMS app actually receives messages. A lot of WizeSMS’s 2025 work was exactly that: 68ecf707 shipped critical MMS/SMS reliability fixes; 5895a312 improved MMS error handling; 0f382e4a added SMS/MMS reliability and debugging tooling. Without that foundation, forwards would be inconsistent no matter how clean the email integration looked.

For the full story, see SMS and MMS reliability on Android and the WizeSMS evolution post.

When email forwarding is the right answer

Email is a good destination when you need a searchable archive, when you want the message to land in the same place as your bank’s other alerts, or when Telegram is not an option on your work accounts. For travel and remote work scenarios where push-style delivery matters more than archival, Telegram forwarding may suit you better — see how to forward SMS to Telegram on Android.

If you run into setup issues, reach us at support@fulldive.com or via the Discord community linked from the app (dfc606b3). For questions about the Fulldive ecosystem as a whole, the About page and the FAQ are the right starting points, and what is Fulldive gives the short version.

Sources

Android Developers — Telephony provider and common SMS intents.
Internal repository brief: website/docs/app-evolution/wizesms-divesms.md.

Last updated: 2026-04-16. Commit hashes and version numbers are drawn from Fulldive repositories inspected on 2026-04-13.