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Show HN: Beeper – All Your Chats in One App

• erohead 6y ago
  While working on Pebble, we ran into a lot of issues as we tried to enable messaging from the watch. For example, we never figured out how to send an iMessage or WhatsApp reply. While digging around for a solution to that problem, I thought it was odd that no one had built a Adrium/Trillian/Meebo chat app for modern chat networks. I buried that thought for a while, until I learned about Matrix two years ago. Matrix is the holy grail of chat. It's end-to-end encrypted by default, federated and open source. The only problem is that not a single one of my friends or family was on it! Luckily the Matrix folks had already envisioned a solution to this problem - they built an API enabling 'bridges' between Matrix and other chat networks. This struck a chord with me, maybe we could finally build a single app that I could use to chat with all my friends, regardless of which chat app they used. Through the Matrix community I met Tulir, the most prolific bridge developer and we started working together on what would become Beeper. I've been using it as my primary chat client for almost 2 years now. I could not imagine going back to the hot mess of 12 different chat apps I had before! Beeper is a paid service because I think it aligns interests between us and our users. We make a featureful and secure app, in exchange you pay us money. For those who prefer to self-host, you can run the entire Beeper backend stack on your own server. The vast majority of the code we've written for Beeper is open source on gitlab.com/nova. Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer. See our FAQ for more info or I'd be happy to explain more.
  • wsinks 6y ago
    Ha, when all those apps started breaking out, I knew that there would be a day when someone would finally connect them. Thank you for the story about how Matrix enabled you here, we're all standing on the backs of turtles!
  • gtf21 6y ago
    How does this play with the security of e.g. Signal? Security and privacy is the main reason many of us will use it so I wouldn't want to compromise it. Would love to use this on Linux, I find all the desktop apps really rubbish (and very happy to pay for it).
    • feanaro 6y ago
      Matrix's encryption is based on the same cryptographic ratchet technology used by Signal. The protocols involved are called Olm and Megolm. Olm is used for establishing 1-on-1 sessions between pairs of users (or rather, their devices). This is then used as a secure channel to share Megolm keys. A Megolm key is ratcheted with each room message sent and is used to derive a symmetric AES key with which the message is actually encrypted. Periodically (every N messages) a new Megolm key is created and re-shared with room participants. So the end result is that it has roughly the same security as Signal, except that a single compromised Megolm key will reveal N messages to the attacker instead of just a single message. In return, the protocol is much more scalable, enabling relatively efficient large end-to-end encrypted groups. Otherwise, all the session self-healing, forward secrecy properties of Signal are retained. TL;DR: Approximately the same as Signal, trading a tiny bit of security in the event of a key leak for more scalable encryption in the setting of large groups.
      • kevincox 6y ago
        I believe this is true for Matrix-to-Matrix communication. However if I understand correctly the bridges terminate the e2e encryption and then connect to the third party service (possibly with a different e2e session).
        • km3r 6y ago
          you can self host the bridge between matrix and signal, allowing e2e to a host you control, and e2e from that host to your device. Perhaps not ideal, but likely unavoidable if you want an all in one app like this.
        • feanaro 6y ago
          Yes, I was talking about native Matrix specifically.
      • rStar 6y ago
        so the answer is: yes this reduces security over signal for both myself and whomever i’m chatting with. due to this, seems like a questionable choice to include signal.
  • recursivedoubts 6y ago
    Thank you, I am very glad to pay you money to solve this problem! Without an open source client, how can I be assured that you aren't harvesting user data through it?
    • erohead 6y ago
      At first, you have to trust us though we will perform auditing eventually. If you would like to use an open source Matrix client, that works as well!
  • necrotic_comp 6y ago
    This is fantastic stuff. Thank you for building it. Matrix truly is a wonderful piece of software.
  • michaeljelly 6y ago
    Honestly so glad it's a paid service. I'm happy to pay for something I can trust to handle my messages, rather than using them against me to sell ads/send to shady data brokers! Awesome work Eric, Tulir, and the whole Matrix team too!
    • spiffytech 6y ago
      $10/mo is steeper than I like for a chat app, but this is so huge to just roll everything into one place, and I like that it's OSS, so I'm happy to pitch in and support the devs even if I'm capable of self-hosting the backend.
      • petre 6y ago
        For $10/mo one could host their own VPS and server infra.
        • robinhood 6y ago
          Classic HN comment. Yeah, $10/mo, + the time needed to setup everything + the time to maintain it + the security holes to patch yourself + the downtime because the instance rebooted for some reasons + the monitoring of the service + all the time wasted because you could have simply lived your life and paid the reasonable fees for the service in the first place.
          • rattray 6y ago
            The first sentence in your otherwise useful post doesn't feel helpful to the conversation.
          • petre 6y ago
            Not at all, prosody and ejabberd both work flawlessly without all of that nonsense. If it's a shitty piece of software maybe, but then why even bother using it in the first place?
            • 6y ago
  • sarthakjshetty 6y ago
    Holy! I don't remember the last time I was this excited for a chat app. I just saw your tweet and came to HN to post it but this was already on the front page haha. Just a quick question (completely noob question, I apologize in advance), do bridges work like APIs? Where can I read more about this protocol? Really looking forward to this Eric!
    • erohead 6y ago
      Simplest way to learn about the API is to look at several bot implementations https://github.com/maubot/maubot https://github.com/maubot/maubot
      • sarthakjshetty 6y ago
        Awesome! Thanks a ton!
  • have_faith 6y ago
    How “brittle” are the integrations? I guess I mean is this a supported feature of all the 3rd party services or do you have to rely on hooking into undocumented apis that could change at any time etc.
    • erohead 6y ago
      I've been using it for the last year straight and I think we only experienced one unforeseen breaking API change.
      • have_faith 6y ago
        Just chiming in, I probably wouldn't pay for $10 a month for this service (maybe I'm not the target market). I do use various messaging apps and it is annoying though. This jumped out at me: >we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage I couldn't tell if that was some sort of joke or if it meant something different to how I was reading it? Being open source is great, but to be honest I lack the time (and expertise) to see how all the integrations work. A page that describes a high level overview of how this works exactly might build more trust. Good luck!
    • jeroenhd 6y ago
      I'm running several of the mentioned integrations on my own server (without the Ansible script) and every now and then there's a weird bug, or some slowdown, or some messages not getting through, but I've mostly switched. I'm not sure if I'd ever pay $10/mo for a service whose main selling point is running what are essentially reverse-engineered hacks. Some of the integrations use the official available API (like the Telegram one) but others (like the Whatsapp and Signal ones) run on altered web client code. Furthermore, in most commercial chat systems, alternative clients are usually not allowed and can lead to a ban of your account if the server considers you a bot. The product is a worthy attempt at fixing the mess that is modern chat solutions, but from my experience I just don't trust the system enough to switch. Also keep in mind that any e2e encryption platforms like Signal and Whatsapp provide is made worthless if you use a bridge; I haven't seen any bridge use Matrix's e2e encryption yet and your messages are all being decrypted on the server regardless.
  • ignoramous 6y ago
    Thanks! Beeper looks amazing. > Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer. I see most bridges are licensed AGPLv3 [0]: Aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? [0] For ex: https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE
    • erohead 6y ago
      The bridges do not run inside the client, they either run on your own self-hosted server or our cloud.
      • KitDuncan 6y ago
        I already have a Matrix server with the bridges I need running. Can I still use your desktop client? It looks sick!
    • nextaccountic 6y ago
      > Then aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? Only if the desktop client is legally a derivative work of the bridges.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • rkangel 6y ago
      The "network connection" provision of AGPL doesn't require you to open source anything you use to talk to it, just modifications of it. To make it clearer: Client <--> Server. The server is AGPL licenced. I can write a client to talk to the server and I don't have any licence restrictions. For example - if I write a web client to talk to an AGPL web server, I don't have to open source the client. If I modify the AGPL server, and then put that modified server on the internet then the AGPL terms require me to make available the modified source code. I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of this: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/
  • crooked-v 6y ago
    > Beeper is a paid service It took me multiple times searching that page to find the "$10 monthly fee" hidden in the FAQ section. You desperately need an obvious pricing section.
    • foolinaround 6y ago
      $10 monthly for a chat service is a bit steep for users from Asia and other places..
      • donclark 6y ago
        Good point. Maybe their pricing could be location based?
        • flurdy 6y ago
          That would just be worked around with VPNs etc, so then they have to spend a huge amount of their dev time not on features but instead on working out how to detect where the users are geolocated. IP, language, credit card address etc. Just not worth it and always going to be many edge cases. One price for all is fairer even if it is very expensive for some locations/people
      • viewer5 6y ago
        Is it a just plain high price (e.g. if this was $50/month that would be expensive for me, here in the US) or is it high comparable to other things (e.g. "other messaging apps would be closer to $3/month")?
        • pinusc 6y ago
          It's comparably high-other messaging apps are _free_. Don't get me wrong, this is awesome-I've been doing it myself manually by hosting bridges myself for a while, and it seems like a very nice solution for non-tech-savy users. But $10/month is steep, given that in practice you're paying that much just for the convenience of having your (pre existing chats) in the same app. What I don't get is that hosting your own bridges requires the same $10/month subscription. If there was a $2/month fee for "power users" instead, letting you host your own... I would most likely get a subscription for the convenience of using their better integrated software.
  • mrkramer 6y ago
    Couldn't all of these chat apps change their TOS and forbid Matrix bridges like Discord forbid running through 3rd party client? You depend on all of those chat providers to allow you to hook everything in one app.
    • kitkat_new 6y ago
      t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more than 100+ bridge users).
      • kevincox 6y ago
        The Discord bridge you are talking about here is a Bot which is officially allowed by Discord, however the Bot APIs have serious limitations that make it unsuitable for full bridging (which is basically making a Discord client). For example it can only be used in "channels" and needs to be added to each "server" by an admin. This means that it is hard to use in servers where you are a guest and you can't use it in DMs and non-channel group chats. I assume they are offering a "puppeting bridge" which means it acts as you, however this means that it is using unsupported APIs and Discord has been known to ban accounts for this. I think it is pretty disingenuous to put the Discord logo on the homepage without pointing out those caveats.
    • luplex 6y ago
      Yes they can! But it's unlikely they would all do it at the same time.
    • wiggler00m 6y ago
      This has happened multiple times in the past with similar aggregators. I will be surprised if it does not happen again. But good luck. I want products like this to exist.
  • arendtio 6y ago
    How about XMPP support? I mean, you are talking about Matrix being the holy grail of chat and at the same time you do not support the IETF standard for instant messaging (which is also federated, supports E2E encryption, can use bridges to other networks and has several open source implementations)... In general, my biggest issue with the Matrix community is that they chose to build something new, instead of fixing something existing. Granted, at the time when Matrix started, XMPP wasn't fit for the mobile revolution. But instead of improving the XMPP standard (which other people did afterward), the Matrix people decided to build something new from the ground up. They took a few different design decisions, but in my opinion, nothing that would justify building a competing solution and splitting the already thin developer community. Now we have too solutions, both failing to find significant adoption. I understand that the matrix people probably built their eco system as a hobby, so who am I to criticize them. I just feel so depressed, seeing so much work being done on a very important subject, not fulfilling its potential due to missing focus.
    • acct776 6y ago
      Was XMPP improved at that time? Or a mess of nonstandard addons/plugins that you had to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame?
      • Semaphor 6y ago
        Close. It’s a mess of standard addons/plugins that you have to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame. Sadly for me, it’s also the only modern messenger that has decent desktop clients that don’t look like discord. But I guess that this will never change as I seem to be pretty lonely with my want of those.
        • dijit 6y ago
          The solution was nearly always to create golden packages which could be summarised. XMPP v1 server could be just XMPP itself. A v2 client/server includes packages for OMEMO, Websocket, Resumeable connections A v3 client/server has packages for whatever else becomes the de jour. The idea that you can just mix and match without ever standardising on a set of capabilities was a large part of what killed XMPP and was entirely solvable.
  • azinman2 6y ago
    Where is the open source code for the iMessage bridge?
    • pseudalopex 6y ago
      It doesn't exist yet.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040
  • nextaccountic 6y ago
    Hey, does it support Telegram stickers?
    • kitkat_new 6y ago
      I don't know about the app, but you can use Telegram stickers in Matrix - somewhat. However, it requires a few minutes of work: https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker For video watchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0
  • kitkat_new 6y ago
    Kudos to Tulir!!!
  • raunakdag 6y ago
    Do you guys plan on continuing with the jailbreakable iPhone method for iMessage bridging for the foreseeable future, or is there an alternative one can expect that is being worked on?
  • littlehugie 6y ago
    Will you Support Threema in the future?
    • hans_castorp 6y ago
      Came here to ask the same. It would only make sense to me if Threema is also added to the list (Signal already is)
  • ibeckermayer 6y ago
    This is amazing. I had precisely this idea ~6mo ago (but never actually built anything). Excited to see you’ve done all the heavy lifting for me. I also love the paid model to align interests and the ability to self host. I will definitely be giving this a test run.
  • liminalsunset 6y ago
    On the website it looks like it says Android and iOS via Element [appears to be the renamed Riot.im matrix client]. Is there no custom iOS or Android application for Beeper that this will ship with?
    • GekkePrutser 6y ago
      Yeah riot was renamed, as they finally admitted that it was a weird name with negative connotations. Never understood what was wrong with the name vector by the way. That was even nicer IMO.
    • acct776 6y ago
      Why would you want that additional attack surface?
  • spamalot159 6y ago
    How does your iMessage integration compare to AirMessage? I've been using AirMessage for a couple months now on my new Android phone and it is about 80% reliable. Images and videos also take significantly longer to processes than if I were to use an iPhone. I wonder if Beeper would be an upgrade over AirMessage or if it is essentially the same.
    • pseudalopex 6y ago
      Beeper requires a Mac like AirMessage. Or they'll send you a jailbroken iPhone.
      • giancarlostoro 6y ago
        How old are these iPhones cause that's the oddest part of that setup I've heard.
        • pseudalopex 6y ago
          iPhone 4.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959 https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
          • giancarlostoro 6y ago
            Thanks for that! It's kind of funny to me, but also kind of cool. I guess you just have to be sure to charge the iPhone every now and then.
            • pseudalopex 6y ago
              I think the idea is you leave it plugged in at home.
      • SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
        How is imessage so hard to reverse engineer that its easier to send someone a jailbroken iphone to use? Surely the protocol can't even change much since many users are stuck on old versions as its part of the OS.
  • bluesmoon 6y ago
    As an answer to your first question: Between 2000-2003, I worked on components of the cross protocol IM backend used by many of the multi-protocol messengers back in the early to mid 2000s (eg: Adium, Trillian, Fire, Ayttm, and more). Each of the frontends had different ways to integrate. Trillian used 2 processes with TCP communication between them to get around the GPL licensed backend), Fire, Adium, Ayttm released everything under the GPL. Eventually most clients moved to using libpurple as the backend (developed by the team behind Gaim), but the devs also started getting older, busier, and having other responsibilities outside of work. The only apps to survive were those that had a business model that allowed them to reuse open source code without having to release any of the code they developed themselves. I personally stopped working on instant messaging in April 2004, the night before I became a Yahoo employee, though I continued blogging and doing conference talks about the experience: - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-most-prolific.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-m... - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-and-unified.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-...
    • est31 6y ago
      It's not just about devs getting older and busier, but also about networks becoming openly hostile towards third party client implementations. There used to be a healthy ecosystem of Whatsapp client libraries, but they have gotten takedowns, and their users bans. Eventually people give up. Some few individuals build third party implementations but keep them secret so that there is no retribution (I remember reading about a guy blogging about a self made iMessage client).
      • Arathorn 6y ago
        Thankfully the EU is moving rapidly towards making that sort of behaviour illegal, which as a knock-on effect should improve the situation for the world in general. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
  • pinusc 6y ago
    As someone who self-hosts a bunch of bridges–great work! Really appreciate seeing a simple solution for people who don't know or don't want to self host. Also, seeing that Tulir is not working entirely pro-bono but that his efforts are backed by a company makes me more hopeful that the bridge development will continue!
  • NikolaNovak 6y ago
    This feels too good to be true. It feels a "Shut up and take my money". I thought with effective demise of XMPP and myriad differing standards and proprietary apps & protocols, this could not happen anymore. I'll check out your site and you may have some very happy paid users soon :)
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    I would love to pay you for this (though I think $10 is a bit steep), but I don't want you to be able to read my messages, which you are since you run the bridges.
    • acct776 6y ago
      Is it possible to build a zero-trust version of this?
      • eps 6y ago
        No. Bridges need plaintext messages, because that's what they feed into WhatsApp and other clients.
        • kitkat_new 6y ago
          Can't you put the bridges on a pi, like described at the website?
      • kitkat_new 6y ago
        see the self hosting options
    • acct776 6y ago
      Also, didn't they say something about being able to run the full stack self-hosted?
  • pimeys 6y ago
    Thank you for Pebble! It was my main Diabetes app for seeing the current blood glucose directly from my wrist until my Pebble 2 finally died a year ago. It was almost like magic and had a week of battery life. The commercial matrix bridge is an excellent idea. I was able to get my homeserver running, but it is a hell of a job to get everything working. When it does work, oh boy, it again feels like magic!
    • erohead 6y ago
      So good to hear that! Have you considered buying one off ebay? Still some good deals there :)
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Wasn't this NovaChat before? I signed up for the beta and was thinking of planning a session with you for enrolment as you mentioned in your last email, hasn't had time yet, sorry. Saw it here at the last HN post. If it's available now I'll gladly use it. Since the Whatsapp thing a couple weeks ago even more of my contacts have spread out to different apps and it drives me nuts. Pricing sounds good too, I know these bridges need work to maintain. I've tried to run them myself using the docker script but it's not ideal. And supporting the maintenance is great.
    • erohead 6y ago
      Yes, Beeper is the new name for NovaChat.
      • GekkePrutser 6y ago
        Ok, great, I like the new name a lot better! It was just funny when I read it first, I thought someone else had the same idea :)
  • p00f 6y ago
    What are the system requirements for self-hosting?
  • modeless 6y ago
    I would love for this to keep expanding to more inboxes, and beyond to news feeds and other kinda inbox-shaped things. Why not aggregate Facebook news feed, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, HN, your local newspaper, etc. It's what Google Reader woulda/coulda/shoulda become. Please, break down the walled gardens. Free us from the whims of the product managers pumping out redesign after redesign for all the services we use.
  • spondyl 6y ago
    Having actually run through spantaleev's matrix-docker-ansible-deploy twice in the past, and run the Matrix bridge stack for a few months each time, this is interesting. Eventually I would have some bridges get out of sync (ie I responded on mobile but the bridge doesn't show my message or messages would get lost) but overall, it worked really well. The downside of having one error in relative isolation is not the bug itself but that it makes you distrust the stack entirely and you end up double checking the source messenger "just to make sure" Having said that, it looks like you've done quite a bit of development on the bridges from a quick glimpse of the Gitlab repos. How are those forks related to Tulir's bridges? Does he integrate any of your changes and vice versa or are they two unique development streams? In your comment, it sounds like Tulir is working with you? Anyway, I'm looking forward to this very much because the multi-messenger thing has been the bane of my existence, I swear. I would gladly pay $10/month to fix this as I have online (and offline) friends all over the place. Oh, for the unified inbox, is there any way to "group" by a person? For example, if I primarily chat with someone on Line but then occasionally talk through iMessage. I would expect them to render as two different "conversations" but logically, they're one person of course. Lastly, I thought the line about shipping an iPhone was satire. You might want to put a note in there like "No really".
    • erohead 6y ago
      Tulir is on the Beeper team, he's the one writing all the bridges! They are quite reliable now.
      • spondyl 6y ago
        Ahh, I think I was a little confused. I had noted that there were "forks" on Gitlab but they're actually just mirrors it looks like so fork is perhaps a misnomer in this case on the part of Gitlab? Also curious to know what the schedule is like for people to sign up? I seemingly never received anything that states I'm on a waitlist or just that my sign up didn't generally go into a blackhole.
  • jimbob45 6y ago
    I thought Apple barred iMessages from being sent/retrieved outside of the specific iMessage app? How did you dodge that?
    • el_dev_hell 6y ago
      Apparently: How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and Windows? This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge.
      • jimbob45 6y ago
        Hmmm, you could pretty easily spin up a Mac container with the Beeper app and then remote into that from your phone. Seems like a lot of work. Still, it seems like they didn't really dodge anything at all. It's the same gripe I had with Signal: if I have to switch between iMessage and Signal, then I'll never be able to sell Signal to my family.
        • aquaticsunset 6y ago
          I'm not sure if this project will go any further, nor if iMessage works inside here, but this is an easier way forward: https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap
  • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Question: If you already have bridges in place to send and receive messages in other clients, is there any reason I can't chat from those clients? In other words, I want to be able to use the Messages app on my iPhone to communicate with other people using Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, etc. I would absolutely pay $10 a month for that, and I almost never subscribe to anything! Is that something you could turn on, or is it more complicated than I'm imagining? P.S. I'm wearing a Pebble 2 right now. Thanks for all your work on that, it's a great device. Edit: Actually, even just some sort of XMPP gateway, so I could use any client that supports XMPP, would basically be enough for me.
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      ...as I think about this more, could I, uh, just in general get more detail on what clients can be used? Asking as someone who has never used Matrix before.
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    I would really like one of these apps to integrate with LINE, which is really big in Japan. Every time I see something like this I check again, but it’s so far never been supported.
    • nimbleal 6y ago
      I was about to comment the same, but with Wechat. I can’t not use wechat, much as I’d like to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t significantly more difficult/impossible to integrate though.
    • kixiQu 6y ago
      I would pour my own blood into a Dockerfile to have the LINE stickers in Matrix.
  • filmor 6y ago
    I think part of the problem is that there is no infrastructure for something like this on iOS and Android. With webOS, there was a single messaging app that integrated SMS, Skype, Facebook and Google. The latter part was implemented using libpurple, so it was relatively easy to extend this to all messaging that libpurple supports. I really liked that approach (marketing name was "Synergy", unified messaging was only a small part of this), but it's quite obvious that neither Apple nor Google have any interest in adopting this unified approach for anything but their respective own messaging of the day.
    • kevincox 6y ago
      I think if we could get the world unified on a single chat protocol we can expect things like this to emerge. Of course it will be unlikely to happen soon, if at all. Plus we all know that Google really wants to own a chat app so maybe they will decide not to make it first-class in Android i fit seems like a threat.
      • acct776 6y ago
        Some big NGOs and world governments are getting on the Matrix train, and the name is dope, don't count that for 0.
      • filmor 6y ago
        Well, it's become quite clear that this unified protocol will never happen :) I'd rather be prepared to use different protocols in a sensible way.
    • acct776 6y ago
      We could always start building on webOS again, it's open now, right?
      • filmor 6y ago
        There are people working on this: https://webos-ports.org https://webos-ports.org A few years ago I was in contact with someone from the project to integrate the changes that I did, so their messaging client should now support pretty much everything that Pidgin supports (which, as I learned today, nowadays includes Matrix, Signal, Telegram and Steam as well through plugins). Maybe I should install that on my old Nexus 4 and see how far they got... :)
  • Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    Nicely done, congratulations on the launch! This brings back memories. In 2017 I had launched a similar 'chat-app network' platform[1] for privacy focused dating using Bot API of the respective platforms allowing communication between, Messenger <-> Telegram <-> Viber <-> LINE It was quickly selected for acceleration by one of those platforms. The features included half-duplex messaging(user had to wait for reply to send a message to prevent harassment), optional location, near-far dates switch etc. Adoption was quick, the first major issue I ran into was that in SE Asian countries many used their children photographs for profile picture in chat apps, which obviously was a no go for dating, so I had to implement Amazon Rekognition to detect age and make those users change their profile picture and their profiles weren't displayed until it was changed. At peak it processed 200,000 images/month. Obviously bridge approach as in Beeper(Matrix) is a more reliable approach than using Bot API, especially due to UI/UX limitations and even platform stability issues(Some bot API were nascent). In about a year it even crossed the Trough of Sorrow with ~2,40,000 users on Messenger alone.[2] But had to let go of it as I fell sick(was told I could become quadriplegic[3]) and as single founder bus factor hit my startup. I received several offers to buy the platform, but I didn't sell it as I was not sure whether the buyers would stick to the privacy promises. So I just nuked the platform. Even if I had continued, I'm not sure whether I could have monetized successfully as selling digital content was explicitly prohibited by these platforms because of Apple Tax/Google Tax(it would mean that the chat apps function as app store). [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.co/goodbye-finddate-is-shutting-down/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.... [3]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadriplegic-68c0371e6f05/ https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...
  • mail2merge 6y ago
    This is good. What competitors do you fear? Also, why no WeChat? The stickers are the best there !
  • alex_duf 6y ago
    I'm glad to see a paid for service, by I don't think I'd take the jump for $10 a month! >(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Aren't you worried about Apple's reprisal ? Also it might be worth adding a word about the privacy of the messages. Am I correct that the end to end encryption goes out the window and each Matrix connector can see the messages in plain text? I think it's not so much an issue as long as it's clear to the user, and that they pay for you to keep their private messages private.
    • LordOfWolves 6y ago
      I'm also curious about Beeper's plan re: potential response/pushback from Apple and the status of (likely broken?) E2E in iMessage.
      • Spivak 6y ago
        If I backup my WhatsApp messages in plaintext or screenshot my iMessage it’s still E2E. Once the message is delivered all bets are off. Forwarding all my messages to some 3rd party service doesn’t break E2E anymore then forwarding them to my friends.
    • harlanji 6y ago
      I’m homeless and pay $10/mo for a terminal app. The value is in the eye of the beholder... FWIW I used to be a pretty well paid software engineer, and I run as much of my personal IT as possible... so for me, the $10/mo is worth it to save seconds 100s of times per month and make hours of experience per month pleasant.
    • swiley 6y ago
      >>(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Is there really something that makes iMessage so difficult to reverse engineer that this is considered economical? People were able to write AIM clients 20 years ago, what special trick has Apple used?
  • hartem_ 6y ago
    Congrats on the launch! Subscribed and can't wait to get access :). Do you know what is WhatsApp's stance on a Matrix bridge and using it to provide a service? They've known to have a pretty harsh stance on other services that attempted to integrate ([0], [1]) and even banned users from the platform for attempting to scrape their own data. Would be very curious to know more details about your WhatsApp integration setup. Thanks in advance! [0] - https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-apps-native-android-api/ https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-a... [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_cease_and_desist_letter_forces_removal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_...
  • pabs3 6y ago
    libpurple (the thing behind Adium/Pidgin) has plugins for a lot of the major messaging networks today.
  • aeoleonn 6y ago
    In the FAQ, I'd suggest adding the words price & pricing. That way I can ctrl-f to either "price", or "pricing". To my weird brain, and after studying accounting, the word "cost" is more of a business/accounting perspective of "expense". Whereas the word "price" seems to be more of a consumer perspective of "expense". Yes, it's a little pedantic ;) Cost: "(of an object or action) require the payment of (a specified sum of money) before it can be acquired or done." Price: "the amount of money expected, required, or given in payment for something." I think it's because: Costing = Accounting. It's the "science" of determining the expense of producing a product or service. Pricing = Marketing. Marketing is what consumers experience.
• pryelluw 6y ago
  wuphf.com ?
  • scottcorgan 6y ago
    this
• tylermenezes 6y ago
  I've been using this for several months now, and it's one of the biggest digital quality-of-life improvements I made in 2020. Getting modern chat networks to interact is never something I thought I would see. Congrats to Eric and co!
  • acct776 6y ago
    What's the worst glitch you've had, if you don't mind me asking?
    • tylermenezes 6y ago
      In the very early days the bridges were less reliable, and there was no warning if a bridge disconnected, so there were a few times when I didn't realize a message didn't go through for a few hours. That's been fixed now :)
• khimaros 6y ago
  this is a really cool project, and a great curation effort. there are ansible scripts which they recommend for self-hosting: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy -- most of the bridges (mirrored to their GitLab org) appear to be unmodified from upstream.
  • erohead 6y ago
    The upstream bridges are written and open sourced by our lead developer Tulir https://github.com/tulir/ https://github.com/tulir/
• dundercoder 6y ago
  I was just looking yesterday for a unified chat client, specifically for slack and discord. Looks interesting.
• bichiliad 6y ago
  I've been really excited for something like this, and seeing that it's built on top of Matrix is also exciting. One of my biggest gripes as of late is how hard it is to, for example, limit your time on Instagram without cutting yourself off from Instagram's chat. I can tell my friends to send me texts as much as I want, but there's always a message or two in Instagram that I don't see until a day or two later than I want to.
  • michaeljelly 6y ago
    I have this exact problem too! Having tried Beeper, and now using it every day, I can confirm it achieves this perfectly. I now just check Beeper in batches (there's a great shortcut for cycling through unreads), rather than having endless apps to check.
    • bichiliad 6y ago
      I can't tell you how great this is to hear! I'm really excited to give it a try.
• recursivedoubts 6y ago
  Please, someone do this for email.
  • erohead 6y ago
    Already in the works :) https://github.com/JojiiOfficial/Matrix-EmailBridge https://github.com/JojiiOfficial/Matrix-EmailBridge
  • fangyrn 6y ago
    what do you mean?
  • tracyhenry 6y ago
    Doesn't your phone's email app support multiple email accounts? Gmail and Outlook both support mail forwarding too?
    • recursivedoubts 6y ago
      The cross-platform client aspect of it (linux in particular) is what I'm interested in. I used mailspring for a while but it just was too buggy for me unfortunately.
      • louis-lau 6y ago
        A nice looking cross platform email client doesn't have a lot to do with this concept IMO. I personally also don't see why you couldn't use different clients on different platforms. They can all link to your email account I the same way.
• gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  I thought WhatsApp banned thirdparty apps some time ago? How does this work exactly?
  • episteme 6y ago
    Could be a wrapper around WhatsApp Web.
    • gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
      I'm sure it could be done that way, but if it violates TOS then I would be wary that the bridge will be unreliable.
      • hansdieter1337 6y ago
        I had that thought, too. That’s the reason that stopped me from implementing sth like that. I think a definitive solution to a cat-and-mice game would be an automated reverse-engineering of the chat apps.
      • amelius 6y ago
        YouTube-DL is successful despite it violating the ToS.
    • jcul 6y ago
      It is, the matrix WhatsApp bridge uses a reverse engineered WhatsApp web library. > A Matrix-WhatsApp puppeting bridge. Written in Go using the Rhymen/go-whatsapp implementation of the sigalor/whatsapp-web-reveng project. https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-whatsapp https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/mautrix-whatsapp
    • GekkePrutser 6y ago
      That's exactly what it does!
• sarthakjshetty 6y ago
  Another quick question, the webpage looks a lot like Mighty's. Is it designed by the same folks or is it like a design language?
• mrweasel 6y ago
  How does it work? Most of those protocols are’t exactly open. Also please add support for Google Chat.
• 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  >This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, is this not a joke?
  • dyeje 6y ago
    Yea, I'm really confused by that FAQ item.
  • erohead 6y ago
    Not a joke https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959 https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
• 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  can you give us a ballpark figues of how much of a vps is needed to get started? you have given an ansible script and all but minimum specs would be nice along with users it can handle
  • erohead 6y ago
    2-3gb RAM + 50GB disk. Small CPU is ok.
    • 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
      How many users can this server serve
• whycombagator 6y ago
  I thought I’d seen this before[0] Also: > I make no claims to this being production level reliability. It's very much beta software. Very beta @erohead does this quote from you 6 months ago still hold true?[1] This is a software I’d definitely use & pay for if it was polished/worked. I quickly looked at the GitLab source and couldn’t find the code for the iMessage bridge. How does that integration work? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693371 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23694933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23694933
  • erohead 6y ago
    It's 6 months better now! We haven't open sourced the iMessage bridge yet, will do that in a few weeks.
• usbfingers 6y ago
  While I think the core focus of Beeper as a cross platform messenger is great, the bigger positive here in my opinion is a matrix client with good UX and design. The user experience portrayed here is much more in line with what is required to get people less technical on one decentralized/federated network, such as matrix. I’m currently working towards the same effort, in a very different stage of development, in that regard with https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon. Props to Eric, Tulir, and the team for making such a good looking client!
  • erohead 6y ago
    I've been following Syphon, it looks great!
  • adkadskhj 6y ago
    Wait, did they do anything for the Matrix client? Their "Get Beeper" section makes it seem like they just use the normal Matrix client. > Available on MacOS, Windows, Linux iOS and Android via Element Which i assume is https://element.io/ https://element.io/ ?
    • louis-lau 6y ago
      You read that wrong. Available on MacOS, Windows, Linux. iOS and Android via Element. So they made a desktop client.
      • adkadskhj 6y ago
        Ah hah, thank you!
  • KitDuncan 6y ago
    Wow Syphon looks sweet. Gonna try it (knowing that it's not a finished product)
• jakelazaroff 6y ago
  Doesn't using this with Discord run a risk of your account getting banned for using a third-party client? That's why the Cordless developer shut down the project: https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless
  • acct776 6y ago
    After a disclaimer, that sounds like a problem between the user and the Discord people.
    • jakelazaroff 6y ago
      Yes — I would be the user, and I would like to avoid that problem.
  • kitkat_new 6y ago
    t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more than 100+ bridge users). So I imagine there might be the possibility of it being allowed for Beeper as well.
    • Half-Shot 6y ago
      t2bot.io uses webhook/bot based bridging which at least doesn't trigger the "no custom clients" clause (as you aren't using any real user account tokens) The broader question of whether bridges are allowed seems to be broadly yes as there are many other bridges out there for Discord (IRC/slack ones) and those haven't been shut down either. I think so long as you aren't abusive, Discord don't care.
  • stryan 6y ago
    They're using HalfShot's appservice bridge I think, which works entirely through the standard Discord API with bot users. IIRC Discord is very much aware of the project. Discord's generally fine with anything using it's API/gateways as long as it's NOT logging in as a "real" user.
• yters 6y ago
  Why isn't there a single app to aggregate and integrate all social media and messaging and email and voice chat platforms? Then it doesn't matter which ones come and go, and people don't need to worry about the plethora of ways to communicate..
  • mrleinad 6y ago
    Because a long time ago, Microsoft bought Skype and created its own communication protocol. It was all downhill from there on...
    • yters 6y ago
      But couldn't an app reverse engineer the frontends for all these communication services and create an aggregation overlay? E.g. what Dropbox did with the Mac osx filesystem.
      • ivanche 6y ago
        An app definitely can't reverse engineer the frontends for all these communication services. A skilled developer (or, more realistically, developers) probably can. They're not cheap though.
        • yters 6y ago
          Doh of course! Hah I meant devs ;)
      • Nextgrid 6y ago
        Doing this within a mobile app is not practical for several reasons. First off, the official mobile apps often use the platform's push notification service for asynchronous notifications of new messages. A third-party app can't pretend to be another app for push notification purposes (unless you jailbreak?). Second, so if you can't access push notifications for async, then you need to poll or keep a websocket open. That'll nuke your battery life. Third, the mobile platforms are quite hostile to this. There's been plenty of third-party YouTube clients that have been removed, and even more stupid things like controlling smart lights on your local network through their official, deliberately unauthenticated LAN API needs an approval from the manufacturer of said lights.
• jnsie 6y ago
  This looks really neat. Would love to know more about how iMessage is integrated and get thoughts on the likelihood of Apple blocking it in the future. But kudos!
• vini808 6y ago
  This is really cool however I’m worried about getting banned from discord using for using your service as I believe it’s not authorized on discord to use third party client
  • acct776 6y ago
    Write them, tell them to fuck off with that.
    • vini808 6y ago
      Yea you are right! It suck to not be able to make custom discord client.
• WorldPeas 6y ago
  For those that don't use a macintosh(or don't care about imessage), ferdi is a great free alternative
  • louis-lau 6y ago
    Ferdi is a web browser that's oriented on messaging. This is something completely different.
• e-clinton 6y ago
  iMessage integration is interesting but I can’t imagine it will last. Not sure what type of wizardry you guys pulled but a cease and desist is likely on its way. Either way, congrats. Really hope it works out as this is very much needed.
• uoflcards22 6y ago
  How do I get started? I put in my email like 10 minutes ago and have received nothing...
  • mouldysammich 6y ago
    I was also a little confused, you'll get an email in a bit explaining that there is a queue for signing up and they'll inform you when you're in and that kinda thing.
    • uoflcards22 6y ago
      Yup, just got it. Thanks.
• codebutler 6y ago
  Looks awesome, I'm looking forward to trying it out! A couple questions: 1) Is the desktop app electron or native? 2) Is the Mac iMessage bridge open-source? Thanks!
  • erohead 6y ago
    Desktop app is Electron. We will open source the iMessage bridge in a few weeks.
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      So much for that "Native Chat Is Better".
    • dawnerd 6y ago
      Dang, was hoping it wasn't electron.
• jonplackett 6y ago
  1) Is this actually live or just a concept. All I get a a survey when signing up 2) This seems like a security nightmare. Is it?
• meibo 6y ago
  > we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Huh, I wonder how this is sustainable. I assume there is a greater cost than 10 bucks a month for this option? I wouldn't want to be the one managing the logistical effort of that!
  • bredren 6y ago
    It says you can run a Mac app but presumably this is to bridge in users outside the Apple ecosystem. So probably it is the cheapest iPhone that has a year or two worth of iOS support left and just sits plugged in. While a novel hack, I would never want my iMessage conversations being bridged to a service outside the Apple ecosystem. While I have no doubt this service will do their best with security, it relies on leaking data from Apple. Imagine if someone built an insecure bridge for FaceTime Audio, and the caller did not know the recipient was using a bridge service. Any reliance on Apple’s massive investment in the privacy and security of a FaceTime transmission goes out the window and into the hands of an unknown 3rd party. It also tricks the sender into thinking that their secure iMessage conversations are what they look like. I know when i see a green chat bubble, that low level people at Verizon can access the content of the messages. I see this as a big problem, where the goal of letting more people in for UX reasons undermines expectations of privacy from those uninvolved in the use of the product. People are mention Discord being unhappy with this, but I imagine Apple would see this as an abomination.
    • morpheuskafka 6y ago
      > It also tricks the sender into thinking that their secure iMessage conversations are what they look like. If you send a message to someone, you are assuming that anything can happen to it unless you have a legal agreement to the contrary. They could have a keylogger (malware or device-management), someone looking over their shoulder, take a screenshot, forget to sign out of the library computer, etc. The end-to-end-encryption on iMessage gets defeated for most people anyway if they have iCloud Backup on.
      • bredren 6y ago
• AnonHP 6y ago
  This looks nice, but $10 a month is a tough sell for me (I use only two of the supported platforms everyday, with about 20 messages total in a day, on average). Also, why does the site ask for an email address to get started? An explanation of why along with the on boarding process would be useful. That aside, the Meet Our Team section on the homepage shows “This is some text inside of a div block.” on the right. Is this an oversight or is it some inside joke?
  • anoa_ 6y ago
    Looks like that's a bug that occurs when javascript is disabled. It should have another two entries. I assume they're now aware of it :)
  • smt88 6y ago
    I would pay $100/mo for it. I think it's just not a pain point for everyone. In a lot of countries, "everyone" uses a single platform and it's not a big deal. As a US user of 5 apps, some for business, it's just a mess and a constant source of friction.
    • trinix912 6y ago
      > In a lot of countries, "everyone" uses a single platform and it's not a big deal. > As a US user of 5 apps, some for business, it's just a mess and a constant source of friction. Depends on what countries you have in mind, but it's pretty much the same elsewhere. Messenger, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Viber, Discord, Telegram, Signal... You just need to have all of them and this seems like a very elegant solution for having all your messages in one place.
    • scrollaway 6y ago
      > I would pay $100/mo for it. For a good quality one? Same. Signed up.
    • jackson1442 6y ago
      Agreed. I would kill to not have to use Snapchat's app to talk to some of my friend groups. Same goes for Instagram.
• css 6y ago
  I used to use an app for this called IM+ in the early days of iOS, looks like they're still around: https://www.plus.im https://www.plus.im
• jmarinez 6y ago
  Beeper bridges with WhatsApp. Does it mean that one can bypass the upcoming Facebook data sharing requirement by just using the Beeper client?
  • jcul 6y ago
    No, it just uses WhatsApp web. Even if it didn't the data is still passing through WhatsApps's servers.
• dmcc7897 6y ago
  I have signed up and will happily pay for this the very second I receive an invite. This is exactly what I need. The UI appears to be top notch, too.
• recursive 6y ago
  There's a list of logos for supported chat networks. But it doesn't give the names. I recognize about half of them, but it would be nice if they were written in words somewhere.
  • bhandziuk 6y ago
    Scroll down to the FAQ Whatsapp Facebook Messenger iMessage Android Messages (SMS) Telegram Twitter Slack Hangouts Instagram Skype IRC Matrix Discord Signal Beeper network
    • recursive 6y ago
      I see it. Thanks. Still though, I'd like some alt text. It wouldn't even disrupt the layout.
• aabbccsmith 6y ago
  I wouldn't use this for Discord, as it requires you to insert a user token (aka self botting – which is against the terms of service). Bar that, the app looks quite promising, but I would be wary of what they are offering.
• kevincox 6y ago
  I love the idea of hosted bridges (in fact I was thinking about starting my own service like this) and I'm glad that the bridges themselves are open source. However I would much rather that the client was open source as well (It would make it way easier to get all my friends to Matrix with a well polished client). Basically $10 a month for access to bridges that funds bridge development is great however I don't want some of that to fund the development of a closed-source client. If the client was opened, or had work upstreamed to an open source client I would be all on board.
  • IggleSniggle 6y ago
    I get what you're saying. However, I think this is nice a compromise. The closed-source client is pushes out continued development of the bridges for a little longer than it otherwise would. The client only matters insomuch as it has good bridges, so the bridges must naturally come first. In the longer term, if a project like this succeeds, then all messaging clients become defined by their feature set rather than their vendor lock-in. If Facebook Messenger wants to compete with Beeper, then it better be able to connect to Hangouts, etc. I welcome a player that pushes chat clients as a whole towards interoperability and commoditization, and am happy to (as a side effect) support a proprietary client that helps drive additional platform support over time (eg, I don't see Airbnb on the list of Beeper messaging bridges yet, etc).
    • kevincox 6y ago
      I agree, I think it is a "good enough" compromise that I would pay for it. However I think that clients are more important than bridges right now, I would love to get people natively on Matrix. I want both but it is a shame not to be funding an open client. I think I would just continue using Element as a client if they let me in to show what I prioritize.
    • danShumway 6y ago
      I'm also skeptical about the proprietary client, I would have kind of thought that having a good Matrix client was more important than the bridges; I almost would have preferred to see the client Open and the bridges properietary. But that is a very convincing comment that kind of sells me on the idea, and it matches what I've seen in other places. Cross platform play on consoles, region locking, etc... once you get enough momentum that something becomes a selling point, it becomes a lot harder for the overall ecosystem to ignore it. So yeah, the argument you raise makes me feel a lot more positive about the service.
• da_big_ghey 6y ago
  I use weechat for this and it works fine. Slack, Discord, Signal, etc. all bridge fine (though Signal is a bit messy). And of course, IRC. The one thing I haven't figured out how to connect is MS Teams, and it doesn't look like this service offers it anyway; is there a reason to use it?
  • acct776 6y ago
    Not for you, apparently.
    • anticensor 6y ago
      Weechat is a TUI application. This is a GUI one.
  • Liskni_si 6y ago
    I run a similar setup although with a different set of services: IRC, Slack through wee-slack, Hangouts through bitlbee with purple-hangouts, Facebook Messenger through bitlbee with bitlbee-facebook. Slack and Hangouts mostly work, but FB Messenger is a pain, attachments rarely work and it disconnects fairly often. So if the Beeper bridges end up being more reliable (possibly due to people being paid to work on them), I might just give it a try. That is, once weechat-matrix works together with wee-slack… (https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix/issues/248 https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix/issues/248) :-)
• yingbo 6y ago
  Are there already many similar apps? I used two: Rambox https://rambox.pro/ https://rambox.pro/ and Franz https://meetfranz.com https://meetfranz.com
  • smt88 6y ago
    No, those are totally different. They're just Electron shells around web versions of chat apps. They're also extremely resource-intensive and buggy. Someone forked Rambox and kept it FOSS, and it's called Hamsket.
    • folkrav 6y ago
      There is also an OSS hard-fork of Franz called Ferdi, for anyone interested. Been using it for some time, I don't love nor hate it.
  • folkrav 6y ago
    Those are glorified browsers wrapping the web based clients in dedicated "tabs". AFAIK it looks like Beeper hosts a matrix<->service bridge between those platforms, and their client actually unifies messages in a single inbox. Seems to be different.
  • 50 6y ago
    https://texts.com https://texts.com - it's not released yet but you can sign up for early access.
    • navanchauhan 6y ago
      Anyone who is already in the early-access? This looks like an interesting alternative and I am looking forward to trying both of them out once I get in
      • KishanBagaria 6y ago
        Yep, check out some tweets by our users here: https://twitter.com/TextsHQ https://twitter.com/TextsHQ
• arsome 6y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, if you're using this with Signal you'd better be running the bridge yourself or your messages are unencrypted on someone else's server.
• saltybytes 6y ago
  Isn't Beeper similar to Franz [0]? [0] https://meetfranz.com/ https://meetfranz.com/
  • louis-lau 6y ago
    No, not at all.
• bfors 6y ago
  If I had a social life I'd be really excited about this
• npmisdown 6y ago
  Could someone shed a light on economics of working on such kind of a project? Aren't developing third-party client for the entity which you do not control and somehow compete with is typically a futile experience? Doesn't it go against most of ToS-es directly (e.g. Discord/WhatsApp happily ban accounts using third-party clients) or indirectly (I guess no proprietary chat platform will be exactly happy having third-party clients that compete with their official and controlled app). I mean how people justify building a business on it given that it essentially means that they have to play on the other's people playground by the rules which can be changed at any time. Like tomorrow Slack would decide to disallow any third-party apps and you're done.
  • anticensor 6y ago
    Discord allows relay bridges (using bot accounts), but not puppeting.
  • nip180 6y ago
    It’s very risky to build a service that relays directly on the API layer of other commercial services. If any of there chat apps change their APIs to stop Beeper traffic then they will lose users. Some services will cause a larger loss than others. I think the economics are simple. The company is two devs and they charge $10/month. If the costs are $4/month/user then they need 83k users to clear a quarter million a year in profit per dev. This isn’t a unicorn, but it has the potential to bring in good money while it lasts.
• maelito 6y ago
  > Interesting, please tell me this is based on matrix > Oh, the matrix logo among others, good thing at least > YES !
• xx4xx4 6y ago
  i hope the company supports parity purchasing power for the 3rd world countries... idk maybe $5 a month.. it would be very helpful..
• ggrelet 6y ago
  I submitted my infos to Nova.chat (same form) a while ago. Do I need to do it again?
  • erohead 6y ago
    Nope!
    • ggrelet 6y ago
      Waiting for the beta, then.
• gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
  you are only enabling marketers and spammers. No user will ever use this in the way you are advertising here.
  • acct776 6y ago
    You won't.
  • NikolaNovak 6y ago
    I may be missing something; I'm jumping at the bits to use something like this, and I'm quite the opposite of spammer - I'm just a nerd with heterogeneous family and friends who refuse to all magically switch to my recommended and obviously superior chat app :P
    • acct776 6y ago
      chomping at the bit**
      • emsimot 6y ago
        champing at the bit** :P
    • gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
      that's my point. for every one ultra power user who will have a dedicated root IOS device just to bridge all that, there will be thousands of spammers doing it for a profit. The only solution to IM fragmentation is decent interoperable clients. But looking at the past, that is the way to kill the ecosystem too.
• soheil 6y ago
  If there is an iMessage bridge that would be considered a zero-day exploit. There is no official or un-office API for iMessage outside the Apple ecosystem and this is part of security measures by Apple to ensure privacy.
  • acct776 6y ago
    Maybe it works differently than that
    • soheil 6y ago
      Looks like they actually send you a jailbroken iPhone physically in the mail to enable iMessage. Not sure how scalable that is.
      • acct776 6y ago
        I think the news they'll generate from it alone will be worth it.
      • trinix912 6y ago
        How exactly does this work? I find this interesting as it raises so many questions: Do they just give away free iPhones, or reset it for each user and have them mail it back? What if it gets lost / damaged during shipping? How do they cover the costs of this?
        • soheil 6y ago
          I may be wrong on the physically mailing you the iPhone. It could be that they ask for your Apple login and just log you in to a jailbroken iPhone on their premise.
  • morpheuskafka 6y ago
    Not sure how it would be a zero-day exploit.. you're allowed to run whatever code you want on your Mac, and if you bypass the sandbox by giving Full Disk Access or whatever other permissions this uses, it follows that it will be able to read your iMessage database. As for the iPhone bridge, that does use a jailbreak which is, of course, an exploit--one that Apple has patched and the patch deliberately not applied to the device in question.
• Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Multiprotocol clients and transports are a dead end. Most walled garden messaging service developers are openly hostile to third-party clients - this goes back to early 00s and ICQ war against QIP and other much better clients. Modern technology and app distribution model has made it far easier for service owners to enforce their rules of using their service.
  • kitkat_new 6y ago
    This is a single protocol client, which can be replaced by any Matrix client. This is why it is so good
    • pseudalopex 6y ago
      Bridges make the server a multi protocol client.
      • kitkat_new 6y ago
        not really, they are all individual pieces put together - independent of the server
        • pseudalopex 6y ago
          They're called bridges because they connect the Matrix server to the other servers. They aren't independent. And reverse engineering protocol changes wouldn't be easier if they were.
        • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
          What is discussed here is nothing new. I ran a jabber ICQ transport for myself and colleagues as far back as in 2005. It was a constant source of pain. Whenever the ICQ protocol changed, you had to wait till developers of transport updated the lib, so you could resume the service. If anything, now it is far easier for service maintainers to update the protocol because the app distribution model got much more efficient - just one tap on the smartphone, so you can just suspend the functionality until the users updates, whereas ICQ devs had to rely on users manually downloading and installing the update to their official apps, slowing the update cycle by many months/years. TLDR: It didn't work then, won't work now.
• halfjew22 6y ago
  >How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and Windows? >This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge. Can you elaborate? Surely this is satire or I'm missing something super obvious.
• soheil 6y ago
  What happens if I have an iPhone and want to send/receive text (not iMessage)? Is this officially supported or text messaging only works if you have an Android?
• soheil 6y ago
  Interesting that "eroheard" comment seems to be pinned to the top of this thread. Is this a new feature by HN and only available to YC company founders?
  • flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
    I doubt it. Probably just a lot of upvotes in a short period of time. It's a pretty cool idea.
    • soheil 6y ago
      As far as I remember every time I post a comment it always shows at the top for about a minute saying "0 minute ago", but in this case it was the second comment right after I posted. Anyone else noticed this?
      • saagarjha 6y ago
        This is not always the case. New comments get upweighted, but they do not get "pinned", if that makes any sense.
• vessenes 6y ago
  Oooh, this is so exciting. I went down the bridged chat rabbit hole earlier this year when I realized I had to be checking signal, telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage and multiple emails to be on top of communication. I stopped when I realized how difficult WhatsApp and WeChat were going to be, though. I want to pay for this, right now. Ideally double if it will help you launch. :)
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    WhatsApp is not that hard anymore. Only issue is that you have to run the Android client somewhere. But you can do that on your phone.
• bkovacev 6y ago
  Is there a plan for supporting Viber?
• kuter 6y ago
  Some of the supported messaging apps doesn't allow automation or provide APIs. I appreciate the work that went into supporting those. But I don't think it would be possible to have consistent support for some of those chat apps. Things like API changes or just getting you server ips banned would disrupt service.
• monkeynotes 6y ago
  Does this support RCS flavours of SMS?
• lc3sim 6y ago
  Congrats on the launch! My understanding of the space is that there is a great desire for "super powered" messaging - especially over text. Any chance "send later" is a part of your roadmap? Or possible to implement using your API?
  • erohead 6y ago
    definitely on roadmap
• heroHACK17 6y ago
  WUPHF.com 2.0
• olah_1 6y ago
  If Matrix / Element had a better UX, it wouldn’t need “bridges” as the best selling point. I use other messengers because I find their features to be better. If I preferred Matrix, I would use that without the need for bridges.
  • louis-lau 6y ago
    The best selling point is federation if you ask me. I prefer matrix, but it doesn't help me if the people I want to talk to don't. Oh, look at this! A project which bridges the clients others use to a client I would like to use!
    • olah_1 6y ago
      It’s not difficult to switch friends to a new messenger if the UX is genuinely better. A great example is Signal. They invested quite a lot into UX in the last year and it paid off.
      • acct776 6y ago
        You have excellent friends. This approach is preferred, but regularly impossible for people with average contacts.
        • olah_1 6y ago
          I can only convince friends that I have influence with. That means that I'm already in regular communication with them and an active member of the conversation. Casually bring up some shortcomings about the current messenger and see if others agree. Then don't jump the gun on new messengers. If it's "good enough", it's usually not ready to invite others. When it is "awesome" is when it's the right time. For example, I only got my friends on Signal after they added user mentions, stickers, and fixed link previews.
  • acct776 6y ago
    It doesn't matter if a service will be around forever and hands out oral sex, some people refuse to switch tech stuff until they absolutely out of options.
• BFatts 6y ago
  Trillian!
• yur3i__ 6y ago
  The main appeal of this to me is the whatsapp part. If I can reliably self host this and get rid of whatsapp on my phone, replacing it with an open source app then that's awesome
• philsnow 6y ago
  I mentioned bitlbee elsewhere in this thread, but in case people haven't heard of it, it's a similar beast to Beeper but it bridges chat systems to an IRC client of your choice (you can use an IRC bouncer or whatever else you want to connect to bitlbee). It supports several chat systems https://wiki.bitlbee.org/ https://wiki.bitlbee.org/ including apparently Matrix. I mostly mention it as a historical note because bitlbee's use of IRC as the bridged protocol means that it's of limited usefulness on mobile. It was fantastic for me in the days before smartphones became a thing, but I do at least 50% of my "chat" on my phone these days.
  • donio 6y ago
    The use of IRC as the bridge protocol is actually the best feature for me because of the multitude of client options of available including several for Emacs. I love the text focus and at least for the protocols I care about images and videos are presented as URLs so they are easily accessible.
  • Liskni_si 6y ago
    I'm a long time user of IRC and bitlbee (I wrote my own IRC bridge for a popular webchat back in 2004) and the last few years I've been using weechat-android as a mobile client and it's not too bad. It's still IRC, so image/video/gif attachments are out of the question, but for someone who's been using text-mode IRC clients for the last 20 years it's a godsend.
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    You can add an app like quassel / quasseldroid on top for some mod cons like unlimited scrollback.
• zufallsheld 6y ago
  I just installed matrix and bridges for telegram, slack and whatsapp using the linked ansible playbook. I used my own domain and a new cheap vps. this took me about an hour. I connected Element on my android phone to my new matrix server and now I have all chats in one app and on desktop. That is totally great and worked far better and easier than I imagined. Well done.
  • itsovermyhead 6y ago
    Any chance you can write down a little more tactical instructions on how you did this? I'd love to try this out, but am not super technical.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • zufallsheld 6y ago
      I really just followed the very good docs here: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/blob/master/docs/README.md https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/b... Granted I'm very familiar with ansible but for someone not technical it should be doable, too.
      • itsovermyhead 6y ago
        Thanks for the reply! I'm going to give it a shot!
  • MattyRad 6y ago
    Thanks for leaving this comment saying that you were successful and it only took about an hour, otherwise I wouldn't have had much confidence in the scripts. It took me ~2 hours but I'm not as well versed in ansible. I'm finally off of Slack's awful electron app.
  • briffle 6y ago
    I am interested, but not sure of system requirements. What kind of resources does it use on your cheap VPS?
• scrollaway 6y ago
  Holy crap, this is inspiring. The blog post (https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus-42dfb9a141ad https://medium.com/@ericmigi/the-universal-communication-bus...) really says it all. I've sent you an email. It's great to see the problem being addressed the right way.
• dkman94 6y ago
  Is this the wuphf rebrand?
  • xlance 6y ago
    Just watched this episode earlier today, my exact thought ^^
• noxer 6y ago
  10$/month is absurd
  • scrollaway 6y ago
    Absurdly low.
• polishdude20 6y ago
  Does this solve the whole security issues with WhatsApp and such? It seems like just a proxy so it's not any more secure than the apps it accesses right?
• NikolaNovak 6y ago
  Is this actually active now? The FAQ implies it's an available product. Going through the form indicates I may be invited to use at some unspecified point in the future... :-/
  • shepherdjerred 6y ago
    I'm also confused. I filled out the form and was then redirected with no other info?
    • rkul 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/imrichvalach/status/1351935706097135617?s=19 https://twitter.com/imrichvalach/status/1351935706097135617?...
• jcul 6y ago
  This looks great. I'm just in the middle of trying to set up a home server using dendrite to do exactly this (mainly for fun). This looks really well done and polished though. It's great to see services like this using matrix as it can only mean positive feedback for the protocol / server code. Is it using synapse or dendrite (or something else) for the server?
  • erohead 6y ago
    we use synapse right now. Hopefully moving to dendrite when appservice support is added
• hansdieter1337 6y ago
  I guess it’s only a matter of time until Facebook et al fight the bridges in form of lawsuits and API changes. Some years ago Facebook’s chat was accessible via the Jabber protocol. I think they won’t like users switching away from their apps and miss the control and ad revenue.
• carterschonwald 6y ago
  I assume some part of the iMessage faq is a joke ? > This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge.
  • Groxx 6y ago
    Nope: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25852034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25852034
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• asiando 6y ago
  I spent a lot of time and effort merging my chat clients in the Meebo era and afterwards with XMPP proxies and I tried to keep friends from messaging me in 3 apps at once. I gave up and that's fine. I have at least 4 messaging apps on my phone and I still prefer that over debugging a proxy. A missed message causes real-world problems, so it's important not to mess with the delicate balance that IM already carries. If the benefit is easier archival and search, give me a solution to that that works in the background rather than a real-time proxy.
• dilly_li 6y ago
  "Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge." This answers my question! One iPhone for each Beeper user, no wonder the $10 monthly fee!
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Not necessarily. In Europe we don't really use iMessage much. I would have no need for it personally.
    • sor1nmarkov 6y ago
      Massive generalisation about Europe I and most people I know use it.
      • Liquid_Fire 6y ago
        It's true, though. iMessage requires an Apple device, and Apple simply doesn't have a lot of market share in Europe (around 30% for iOS, less for macOS). So most people don't have access to iMessage.
        • GekkePrutser 6y ago
          Yeah that's what I meant, they don't have the critical mass to really put it on the map here. It falls back to SMS for Android recipients of course, but group chats and pictures/video are out of the question. So in practice nobody in my circle uses it whereas Whatsapp is huge (still). I don't have iOS but I would notice if I got SMSes. The only ones I still get are insecure 2FA and spam.
• worldmerge 6y ago
  Because you're using APIs, if I stop paying I won't lose my messages right? They'll still be in my other apps?
• electriclove 6y ago
  Reconsider your pricing strategy. $19 for the year will get you TONS of signups (if scaling is not an issue).
• hemmert 6y ago
  Awesome, Eric! Keep it up!
• jaimex2 6y ago
  If the price comes down I'd be very keen.
• wiggler00m 6y ago
  Where can I read more about Beeper's privacy and encryption?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• EGreg 6y ago
  Wait wait -- how is Beeper able to use WhatsApp API? I thought it was closed!
• dbancajas 6y ago
  no viber support?
• 3np 6y ago
  Great to see the progress! I really hope you can grow sustainable and profitable while facilitating Matrix. Kudos! Tulir's been doing fantastic work, but it does seem that to ~80%, all the significant bridge maintenance/development for public IM networks is a one-man show... Makes me a bit concerned that such a key piece of the Matrix ecosystem (and IMO a crucial component for eventual success) is underfunded, neglected and relying on a single person. Keeping things working with potentially hostile changes in undocumented or unsupported APIs is not trivial. Also, how does your roadmap for new protocols look (if you have any)? I'd love to promote this, but without LINE it's pretty much uninteresting/useless here in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. I heard it's also one of the top IM apps in other countries, like Thailand.
  • Arathorn 6y ago
    fwiw, separate to Tulir being funded by Beeper for all of his bridges, Element also funds a bunch of bridging work for the Matrix.org Foundation: IRC, Slack, Gitter, XMPP. Meanwhile there are other ones from the community (e.g. Discord). So, it's not entirely true to say it's a one-man show, although Tulir's prolificness is impressive :)
• ggm 6y ago
  PSI is dead, all hail Adium. Adium is dead, all hail Beeper. Is that it?
  • GekkePrutser 6y ago
    No. Adium does everything inside the client app. This used a matrix server so you can connect from multiple clients even if the source network doesn't support that.
    • ggm 6y ago
      Thanks! huge learning uplift from one sentence. I should add, that Adium developers are fighting on, but its been a long time since significant investment in the app was made and it crashes on big sur frequently. If Beeper by using the matrix can avoid this, and simplify the GUI back down, I could be taken there.
• Kaze404 6y ago
  I wrote some code for this project a while ago and was fascinated by how well it works. I'm glad to see it finally being released :)
• The_Amp_Walrus 6y ago
  Beeper people: I filled out your Airtable form... how do I give you money?
• miguelrochefort 6y ago
  Any plans for VoIP SMS support? A few years ago, I moved my phone number to VoIP.ms to save about $50/month on my cellphone bill ($70 /month for calls, texts and data vs $20/month for only data). VoIP.ms costs me roughly $2/month. With the pandemic, I cancelled my cellphone plan and make all phone calls on WiFi. However, SMS are still a pain to deal with. About 2-3 people in my life still send them, and many apps still use them for authentication/verification. Adding SMS support would make Beeper a lot more appealing, and might encourage people to move to VoIP (a service you might charge for when you inevitably work on audio/video bridges).
• el_dev_hell 6y ago
  Serious question: Is the below a joke or legitimate? How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and Windows? This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge.
  • monkeypilot 6y ago
    It’s so sincere that it doesn’t sound like a joke. Maybe the fact that they are a paid subscription they can do this? What’s the pricing of Beepr?
    • pragmatick 6y ago
      $10 a month. It has to go somewhere...
  • webo 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959 https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
• farukuzun 6y ago
  It looks great, I would definetely subscribe but trusting a third-party with my IM data something I'm not comfortable with. Fundamentally, deploying a Matrix homeserver in the cloud is the same thing. Homeserver requires a public ip address or domain name, it's really hard to set up one at home. I don't have enough information about Matrix protocol but, a raspberry pi image, or Dockerfile doesn't need IP or Domain, uses hosts file to trick the homeserver maybe, just supports bridges, would be perfect.
• underlines 6y ago
  trillian, Messenger Plus, Franz, WhatsApp Plus. they all eventually die out. Either they use unofficial hooks or just the web app of the service. :( also: i am living in Thailand and here everybody uses LINE Messenger. they removed the webclient and the platform is not famous enough outside of SEA for any western multimessenger dev to reverse engineer and hook.
• peteretep 6y ago
  This looks awesome, only I tried to "get started" and it looks like it's just mined a bunch of my contact details into Airtable, which seems suboptimal?
  • nickbeukema 6y ago
    I'm experiencing the same thing, I'm unable to sign up.
    • rkul 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/imrichvalach/status/1351935706097135617?s=19 https://twitter.com/imrichvalach/status/1351935706097135617?...
• krisgenre 6y ago
  Not sure how many know/remember Digsby? It worked pretty well on Windows, got acquired by Tagged, open sourced, promise of Linux client and then disappeared. Hopefully Beeper will survive.
• TheKarateKid 6y ago
  What's old is new again. Anyone remember Trillian? AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo messenger all in one client!
• maneesh 6y ago
  I just signed up and filled the form. It redirects to the home page. How do I find the link to download?
• technick 6y ago
  They lost me at $10 a month. I would be interested at $5 a month, but $10... I'm just going to go without or even consider setting up my own thing with Matrix.
• wnscooke 6y ago
  It’s cool, the tech behind it all, but I’m in the process of closing my WhatsApp account, so I don’t need a bridge. For some reason my initial reaction was joy that this could be a WhatsApp replacement, somehow. And at the moment, I like keeping my other chat apps in their own app window, for keeping track of what I’m doing In them. I could see myself accidentally responding to the wrong person if everything is in one app. So again, it’s cool what with the tech, and OS, but, as I think about it... am I really going to use it?
• ronyfadel 6y ago
  A significant part of my SO’s business (interior architect) is based on introductory chats with clients on different platforms (namely Instagram, WhatsApp, iMessage). Did you guys solve custom features such as “replies to a specific message” (all platforms), or “stickers” (WhatsApp/iMessage). The last thing I want to do is to go check my phone every time I receive a sticker from a client, to get more context; it would beat the purpose of Beeper.
• thatgerhard 6y ago
  I like the idea, but the signup is awful, just give me a download link..
• johnisgood 6y ago
  How does encryption work across the bridges? Is this written down anywhere? Signal, Telegram's Secret Chat, etc.
  • acct776 6y ago
    tl;dr Worse, in most if not all cases.
• vladojsem 6y ago
  i can imagine this can work well for different way how to contact tech support. are people using it for that use case?
• habosa 6y ago
  This looks super cool! Obligatory WUPHF link: https://youtu.be/8wfG8ngFvPk?t=9 https://youtu.be/8wfG8ngFvPk?t=9
• bambax 6y ago
  This looks awesome but $10/month/user is too high. Can one register somewhere and be notified if the price changes?
• maikhoepfel 6y ago
  I very much welcome this, it would enable a smooth transition away from centralized, for-profit clients. But am I missing something? Is this open for public? There's a questionnaire after clicking signup, and then one gets redirected to the homepage again. No emails. The privacy policy hardly looks encouraging. The hosted version is only tempting if they'll comply with GDPR.
• poisonborz 6y ago
  This is awesome, but do I see correctly - based on the screenshots- that only basic chat is possible? I wouldn't expect calls or video, but things like sending gifs, location, etc.
• fileyfood500 6y ago
  Will this support Amazon Chime and Microsoft teams?
  • JeremyNT 6y ago
    I'd love an answer on this one. Most services I use have decent clients already, so the rest of the bridges are interesting but not really that important to me. Teams, on the other hand, is mandated by my employer and working with it is an absolute nightmare!
• hypfer 6y ago
  It's mind-boggling, how many of these "All your Chats in one App"-Apps exist. Maybe start building an "All your All your Chats in One App-Apps in one App"-App?
• neycoda 6y ago
  All your chat are belong to us
• properdine 6y ago
  What's the story on data retention and privacy? Are there servers you store data on and it downloads from? Do you back up messages? Perhaps this is implicit from Matrix protocol but I didn't see a clear call out on the site.
• deallocator 6y ago
  I see that they allow you to search through your messages across all platforms. How do they achieve that, unless they're somehow storing all my messages in their backend (which I'm not really a fan of if that'd be the case)
  • tulir 6y ago
    Messages are stored in encrypted form on the Beeper server and the Beeper client has a local search index (the same one used by Element desktop: https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat https://github.com/matrix-org/seshat)
• rhacker 6y ago
  It really sucks that we can't go back in time to the days chat apps looked like AIM, ICQ, etc... The current model of making giant React based Electron apps for a chat app is idiotic IMO. Maybe that's the price we pay for corporatizing chat? I liked breaking my chats out into different tiny windows I could see everything happening at once.
• DeerSpotter 6y ago
  ALL YOUR CHATS BELONG TO US
  • IggleSniggle 6y ago
    ...except this is open-source and self-host-able. I mean I am always here for "all your base" memes, but it doesn't apply here.
• chenster 6y ago
  Not "All Your Chats". Franz is doing this already. It has a free version with limited features. The down side is it is a CPU hog. It doesn't support WeChat, neither is your Beeper. That really sucks. It is probably due to WeChat's closed API that they never really wanted any 3rd party to interface with it. Not sure if anything you can do about it.
  • KitDuncan 6y ago
    Franz and Beeper aren't very comparable. Franz is just the usual webapps combined in one wrapper if I understand correctly. Beeper actually bridges all chat services into a unified experience.
• CosmicShadow 6y ago
  I keep thinking that's the PayPal logo
• foolinaround 6y ago
  A suggestion for the beeper folks -- offer any 2 integrations for free, and then another tier for 2 more integrations, etc. Maybe the free tier has google ads -- these folks are already seeing these most likely and wont mind?
• alaenix 6y ago
  Wonderful promise ! I'm really thinking that I need an app like that one but how to justify the price ? I'm ready to pay for that kind of service but it's seems too expensive to me. How an app like this can cost you 10$ per month and in comparison an app like Procreate (best drawing app on iPad) cost you only 10$ (not per month or year, just 10$).
• ops3936 6y ago
  do you have plans of making outside calls or sending sms?
• maverik 6y ago
  awesome product!
• visarga 6y ago
  Are paying users messages visible to Beeper? If so, then it's just another risk.
• squiggy22 6y ago
  Does this provide any additional privacy benefits over using say the native apps for said networks?
• agluszak 6y ago
  How does the integration with facebook work?
• smusamashah 6y ago
  How does it compare with pidgin? https://www.pidgin.im/plugins/ https://www.pidgin.im/plugins/
  • kitkat_new 6y ago
    Beeper uses Matrix infrastructure
• easyascake 6y ago
  Went to their website, filled out the form, assumed I was signing up for a beta. Then...nothing happened. No automated emails, "you're in the beta!" notifications, nothing. Reached out to them on twitter, nothing. So I'm not sure what's going on, but from where I'm standing right now it looks like I gave my email to a service for no reason...
• ironmagma 6y ago
  I would like to see this but for notifications. One cannot trust websites to have actual notifications anymore instead of stupid re-engagement pushes, and logging in to the various apps is a chore designed to be addictive. We need a no-nonsense platform for aggregating those.
• lukegraham 6y ago
  How does Beeper avoid Instagram deciding that "your account has been compromised" and forcing you to change passwords? Unsurprisingly, Instagram seems to not be a fan of "illegitimate behaviour" (like bots / 3rd party clients).