A Jeopordy answer.
I use MightTextto text from my computer. You configure a link to your phone… you can compose and view text messages on the computer - the phone sends and receives them.
You also get phone battery level and incoming call notifications. Highly recommended.
My only gripe with Google is that for a while now they are leaning heavily in favor of ease of use at great expense to functionality.
One example: It used to be that you could custom set the size of your map in google maps and do a search and find things in that area. Now they’ll simple ignore your map and redirect you to the nearest place with the name of your search even if it’s a thousand miles away.
I get that most people just turn on their phones in the car and want to be able to search for anything and find it without messing with the map manually. So this functionality is probably best for most. But give me the option of using it the old way also. All google apps desperately need an “advanced” toggle or option list.
On my Android device the default still seems to be that it searches near my present location, at least if I have GPS turned on when I do the search. But they’ve taken away the tap-to-add contact feature, which used to mean you could tap a result, either on the map or in the list, and automatically add the business to your contacts–name, full address, and phone number. All gone now, but you can still type it in manually; fifty keystrokes to do the same job a single tap used to do.
Android isn’t free either. The price of a good smartphone is not chump change, whether cash on the barrelhead or accepted as a “free” phone on contract.