SMS Character Counter

SMS Character Counter

Long text messages must be broken into smaller parts for sending and service providers typically charge separately for each text message part.

The SMS Character Counter displays information on the length of your message to help you track your text message usage.

The SMS Character Counter can be turned on and off from the Message Center Preferences.

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When enabled, two numbers are displayed in the bottom corner of the window when editing a message.

The first number denotes the number of parts required to send this text message. The second number denotes the number of characters that can be added before an additional part is required.

How many characters fit in a text message?

The answer to this question depends on the alphabet (language) of the characters in the message as well as the overall length of the message.

Single Message: 160 GSM characters or 70 Unicode characters

If the message only contains characters from the GSM alphabet (Latin, Roman, Greek and punctuation symbols), a total of 160 characters can be placed into a single text message part.

If any character in the message is not in the GSM alphabet, then the Unicode alphabet is used instead. The Unicode alphabet includes all possible symbols, but only 70 Unicode characters can fit into a single text message part.

Multi-Part Message: 153 GSM characters or 67 Unicode characters

If the message exceeds the length of a single text message part, the message is sent as a multi-part text message. The message will still show as a single, long message on the recipient's phone.

The character limit for each segment of a multi-part text message is lower than that of a single-part text message due to the overhead required to place each part in the correct order with its peers.

Multi-Part Theoretical Limit: 39,015 GSM characters or 17,085 Unicode characters

Multi-part text messages can be formed with up to 255 individual parts to create much longer messages.