I am really struggling to replace facebook messenger / whatsapp for a few casual conversations. My friends and I are all wanting to move away. We are not heavy users of this but need it to work. I think the requirements are:
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floss client for android, linux, windows
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persistent history across devices
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reasonable security
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don’t need to self host server
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can send a message to offline user, they get it when they come online
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not tied to or reliant on phone number / cell service
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ETA: end user documentation explaining how to set up and common troubleshooting
tried:
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matrix: the thing with having to keep track of room keys and stuff is too complicated. every time someone uses a new device it is a ton of issues and we could never quite get it ironed out
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signal: tied to phone number, no history across devices
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xmpp: similar to matrix the key situation is confusing, also no cross device history
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ETA: simpleX: a lot of people here are mentioning simpleX. It didn’t come up in previous investigations so will give it a shot.
- ETA 2: It doesn’t seem to have persistent history across devices. Clarification?
I actually didn’t think this would be such a problem but it is breaking us. we don’t need a lot of sophisticated features like voice, video, moderation, 1000s of participants, spam protection etc that seem to be of concern to the projects. just simple text chat.
I wonder if Delta Chat would work for you.
I have seen it but never tried it. I kind of got the impression it was like a novelty/experimental thing rather than a general purpose serious application. Is that incorrect?
Does your email account get filled up with bazillions of messages? I once installed an app that “backed up” all my SMS to email; it made 1 email for every SMS. It was terribly annoying because when searching mail for something all these irrelevant scraps of old conversations ago clutter up.
Or do you just have a separate mail account to use on chat?
If Facebook messenger is the comparison, Deltachat is awesome. Its very bloated though if you use it for email too. Also for some reason it doesnt delete messages from the server which is really annoying