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Second phone number – how to create a virtual line with Hushed

Hushed is a free iOS app that offers a quick, easy, and affordable way to configure a second line for your iPhone

Believe it or not, it’s incredibly easy to create a “virtual” second phone number to use with your iPhone, and there are plenty of benefits to doing so – most notably, keeping your personal and work lives separate without needing a whole new handset. A service called Hushed can hook you up in no time at all.

Hushed

Hushed works inside a dedicated app which you need to install free from the App Store, before deciding on a plan. As you’d expect, this isn’t a totally free service – but a range of pricing options allow users to dip their toes in the water without spending a lot of cash.

The iOS app lets you make and receive calls, send and receive texts, and organize your second number (including buying more credits).

Folks in the U.S. and Canada can take Hushed for a spin free of charge for three days, while other regions can start with a single week or month to test the waters.

Once you’ve got an active second number, Hushed essentially acts as a combined Phone and Messages app for this number. You can make calls to other lines from inside the Hushed app, you can send and receive SMS messages, and you can check on voicemail. Hushed links up with the built-in Contacts app and ports all your names and numbers over, so it’s easy to interact with contacts you already have saved on your device.

In the app, you can check on how many minutes or texts you’ve used.

There are even additional options to configure like call forwarding and auto-reply messages. Paid packages provide “minutes” and “texts,” like regular phone contracts, and in-app purchases let you add more.

If there is a downside to Hushed, it’s that everything lives inside the app – there’s no way of integrating this second number with the rest of iOS through your regular Phone or Messages apps. That said, splitting the functions out like this definitely avoids any possible confusion between numbers.

So how much does it all cost?

Well, like we said, iPhone owners in the U.S. and Canada can try out Hushed free of charge for three days. From here, there’s a standard pricing structure which is similar for all countries and is made up of “prepaid” and “pay as you go” plans.

You can pay as little as $1.99 for a Hushed plan, but it doesn’t come with much.

Prepaid plans start at two bucks for seven-day nationwide access, consisting of 20 minutes of talk time or 60 SMS messages. The price then racks up to a year-long plan made up of 500 minutes of talk time, or 1100 SMS messages, which will set you back $30/£30. You can add more minutes and texts in the form of “Hushed Credits,” which, once purchased, will never expire.

To keep your second number in use, you may need to spend a little extra on Hushed Credits.

A pay as you go plan costs an initial $5/£5 with a buck of starter credit, which you’ll need to top up as and when you need it.

The bottom line, then, is that Hushed offers a quick and easy way to configure a second line. It’s also an affordable option, too, so long as you don’t plan on using a lot of talk time or sending a bunch of texts. If you do, the cost is going to rack up quickly. To find out more, download the free Hushed app and take the three-day trial for a spin.