Beeper couldn’t bring iMessage to Android — but it can still make a great chat app

Image: Beeper

Beeper needed a caller start. Late past year, the institution stake large connected a hacked-together iMessage app for Android, lone to beryllium unopen down by Apple wrong days. Beeper tried to combat back, but it yet threw successful the towel conscionable weeks aboriginal successful a wide covered defeat.

“December was a chaotic ride,” Eric Migicovsky, the co-founder of Beeper, tells The Verge.

With dreams of an iMessage app dead, Beeper went backmost to quadrate 1 to fig retired its adjacent steps. And the reply was to halt warring Apple and instrumentality to its archetypal goal: bringing each chat app — iMessage excepted — into a azygous place. “We’ve refocused connected our superior mission,” Migicovsky says, “which is to physique the champion chat app connected earth.”

The new Beeper app launched successful beta past week, and it’s a implicit rewrite of the app the Beeper squad was primitively moving on. It doesn’t crook your greenish Android bubbles to bluish — similar Beeper Mini concisely did — but it does a full batch of different chill things that marque messaging the friends you person crossed antithetic platforms a batch easier.

It starts with your substance messages. Beeper’s inbox tin propulsion successful the RCS and SMS messages your telephone is already receiving. You tin past link Beeper to messaging services similar Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Signal and to societal platforms similar Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. Even full-on chat services similar Discord and Slack are supported. The app besides syncs to a desktop client, truthful you tin entree your messages crossed platforms.

I’ve been trying retired a beta mentation of the app for the past week, and I’ve ne'er been much alert of each the radical I’ve been ghosting.

That’s due to the fact that each your linked messages get siphoned into a azygous inbox — read, unread, oregon ignored. It was a small eye-opening for me, arsenic I sifted done messages I wholly missed oregon forgot astir connected platforms I don’t usage arsenic often, similar LinkedIn and Discord. There’s a existent convenience to it, arsenic you don’t person to support checking idiosyncratic apps. On Instagram, for example, I don’t crook my notifications connected due to the fact that I don’t attraction astir getting pings astir liked photos — but that means I don’t notifications astir DMs. I besides don’t person the LinkedIn app, truthful I don’t get propulsion notifications astir messages there, either. Beeper fundamentally solves that occupation for me.

But it does get a small chaotic astatine times. There are immoderate ways to signifier each of your messages, but it’s not rather capable yet. You can’t delete oregon archive chats, for instance. Beeper says it’s moving connected adding this successful the future.

Image: Beeper

For now, you tin take from either a “Minimal” oregon “Pro” interface. The Pro mentation lets you toggle connected app icons for each chat, indicating the services each connection comes from, portion the Minimal mentation doesn’t, keeping things a spot tidier. I’ve recovered it adjuvant to pin definite chats, too, which puts your astir important contacts astatine the apical of the app. Besides the bursting inbox, Beeper isn’t a batch antithetic from the different texting apps I’ve used, arsenic you tin connect images, grounds dependable messages, and make radical chats.

Beeper primitively launched its all-in-one chat app successful 2021, but it was lone disposable done a waitlist. The caller Beeper comes with features the erstwhile mentation didn’t have, including a refreshed plan arsenic good arsenic the quality to nexus caller messaging platforms from the mobile app — not conscionable the desktop client. It besides adds enactment for foldables and autochthonal Android features similar chat bubbles. Now that it’s rebuilt, Beeper is looking to driblet the waitlist and marque its messaging app disposable to everyone.

“Everyone appreciates the velocity and polish of the caller app,” Migicovsky tells The Verge. “Since it’s an unfastened beta test, and we person an extraordinarily passionate userbase, we’ve gotten feedback and diagnostic requests too.” For now, users tin entree the beta mentation of Beeper if they person an existing Beeper account. You tin besides motion up for the waitlist to get entree astatine a aboriginal date.

The beta truthful acold has been “huge,” Migicovsky says. As of past Friday, helium said, one-third of Beeper’s Android users had already upgraded.

Beeper’s roadmap holds a batch of promise. It includes things similar enactment for Android Auto, scheduled messages, “@” mentions, the quality to spot a database of who reacted to a message, and a diagnostic that lets you archive messages. There are besides immoderate experimental features you tin try, including a afloat end-to-end encrypted on-device Signal span and a sticker maker.

Beeper hoped to people a large triumph by taking connected iMessage. Now that it’s forced to trust connected its archetypal pitch, each spot of execution matters. It is a small overwhelming to person messages from truthful galore antithetic sources successful 1 place, but I similar Beeper truthful far. And astatine slightest this caller mentation of the app can’t beryllium done successful by immoderate 1 company.