Of course, using Facebook Messenger on the computer is just as easy as on your phone… or is your phone just as easy as computer? No matter, it’s easy. For other messengers, you have to get more creative.
This one isn’t too difficult. Go to the WhatsApp web site, then try to log in. It will give you a QR code. Go to your cell phone, get onto WhatsApp, go to the upper right menu, choose “WhatsApp Web” and point it to the QR code… Boom! You have your WhatsApp on your computer and on your phone.
You can’t have WhatsApp web on two computers at once. If you sign on at work (say), then your home computer is logged out. Not too bad though, since it’s easy to sign back in again.
This only works when the phone is on-line and has data through WiFi or its own data connection.
Google HangOuts
This is even easier. If you are logged onto your Google account in your browser, just go to the Hangouts page, and there it is. You can be logged in on as many computers as you want for this.
Hangouts works whether or not the phone is on, or connected.
SMS (Text Messaging)
There are two approaches here. Both requires the phone to be on-line and have data (WiFi or its own data) and SMS access.
Google Messages
If you are on Android or otherwise have access to the Google Messages application on your phone, make that your SMS program. Then you can go to the Google Messages web page and see all the conversations. The nice thing with Google Messages is that, when you read a message on your computer, it’s marked as read on your phone, so the notification goes away.
PushBullet
This is really cool, and was my go-to solution before I had Google Messages. Put the PushBullet application on your phone, then go to the PushBullet web page and sign in on both. You can send and receive your phone’s text messages.
There are two drawbacks to PushBullet. One is that it costs money to sign up and keep it running (sorry, I forget how much). The other is that, reading a text message on PushBullet does not mark it as read on your phone, so the notification stays up until you do read it on your phone (or at least cancel the notification).
Kik Messenger
I think here, you are out of luck. For security reasons, you don’t want to use other company’s programs to dig into the Kik Messenger messages.