We have many instant messaging apps on their phones, taking up our time and mental space. Most of the time, there is the inevitable overload of notifications on the phone’s lock screen. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, Slack, Skype and even direct messages on Twitter and Instagram. Add to that, there will often be overly enthusiastic contacts who believe in overcommunication. The end result is that sometimes you will feel like pulling your hair out. Certainly, most of the time. The world is begging for an app that can put all those apps together, in one window, so you don’t jump, jump and jump between them and end up exhausting yourself and your thumbs. Simplify things if you can. Our prayers may have been answered. The app is called Beeper and it may be the super app you’ve been waiting for. I am one step closer to instant messaging nirvana, or at least what I hope it will be, and it will cost me $ 10 a month for convenience.
When Beeper was announced earlier this year, needless to say, it was something that immediately got on the waiting list. The promise at the time was that Beeper would come back with a chance to reserve his username at some point. This week, finally, I received that long-awaited email with a personalized link to reserve the username. And then came the attention to detail – you’ll pay $ 10 a month for the service. You share your credit card details now, but you will be charged after a few weeks, when you are invited to start using Beeper with the username you have reserved for yourself. It’s the same price if you sign up for Android or iPhone. There is also the option to pay a year in advance, that is, $ 120 right away, which the good people at Beeper say will put you on the waiting list even more. I paid the $ 10 fee to get on the waiting list, because paying the whole year wasn’t really satisfying my appetite for taking risks.
So, what do I get for $ 10 a month with Beeper and why do I recommend that you at least try it out too? The notification clutter illustrated above is the main reason for getting an app that brings all of your messaging apps together in one place. Beeper is not a messaging app by itself – what it does, brings all of your existing accounts under one roof, like an app that you open to read and respond to all chats from all linked apps. At this time, you can bring WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, Slack, Skype, Twitter, Instagram, Android messages, IRC, Matrix, Discord and Beeper network within one application. This is the majority of popular instant messaging applications, although it is interesting to note that Chinese-owned WeChat and Line are not yet part of the supported applications.
Beeper says that once the username has been reserved, the wait begins. Each week, they will invite more and more people to start using the service. When it is my turn, I will have 30 days to set up my account and start using Beeper, otherwise the username will be released again. The application is multiplatform and is available for Apple iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Apple macOS devices, Microsoft Windows and Linux computing devices. That said, getting iMessage to work on Android phones requires some interesting workarounds. There will be filters for Beeper’s inbox, the ability to search all chat networks, as well as suspend or archive messages. Beeper developers say there is no free subscription layer at the moment, although there are plans to introduce a trial option later this year. Beeper will also have a dark mode with the next app update, which means that Beeper users have something cool ahead of them.