An app to put your text messages in order

With instant messaging apps now handling most of our personal and official conversations, the traditional SMS app has been pushed into the background. But it’s still useful, be it for that important one-time password or for a quick look at your bank balance after a financial transaction.

The SMS inbox, however, can get messy, with the numerous alerts, offers and services from different sources you have subscribed to for updates.

A new Android app from the Microsoft Garage project, the company’s innovation wing, can now help you filter your SMSes, making it easy for you to navigate your inbox. In order to use SMS Organizer, developed by an eight-member team from Hyderabad, users first need to set it as their default SMS app. During the set-up, the app scours your messages and sorts them into four main categories: personal, transactions, promotions and starred. The “personal" tab is where you will find all your conversations. This makes it simpler for you to find a particular conversation and not scroll through promotional messages. Under the “transactions" tab, you will find all the SMSes related to financial transactions—bank alerts, unpaid bills, and so on. The “promotions" tab saves all the commercial and promotional messages from your inbox.

When you open the app you will also notice three tabs on the top for “reminders", “finance" and “offers". The app uses a smart reminders system to jog your memory about bill payments, movies and forthcoming travel, using information from SMSes. Reminder cards can be found under the “reminders" tab. You can even set a new reminder and attach a corresponding SMS with it under this tab. For example, if your DTH recharge is due a day later, you can set a reminder and attach an SMS received from the DTH operator to it.

The “finance" tab keeps track of all recent activity on your debit and credit cards and payment wallets. The app developers clearly mention that the app is built to function perfectly offline, without an internet connection. That means all the classification and reminder setting happens on the device. No personal or financial information is uploaded on to the cloud.

The “offers" tab is the one section that might not appeal to many since it classifies and shows promotional offers from your SMSes. The app also collates offers and discount coupons from the web—for travel, shopping, food, bills, etc. It may be best to go into the app’s settings and hide the offers tab to avoid clutter.

SMS Organizer also offers different colour schemes and themes to personalize the app.

SMS Organizer is available free of cost on the Android Play Store.