Beeper is a new universal chat application that tries to unify 15 different chat platforms in a single interface. The app is the work of a team that includes Eric Migicovsky, CEO and founder of former smartwatch maker Pebble, who announced its launch on Twitter. The Beeper website reports that the project was previously known as NovaChat and requires a $ 10 monthly subscription.
Although Beeper integrates with the most popular messaging services in the world, such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Discord, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, it is the support for Apple’s iMessage that is perhaps the most interesting. IMessage is officially available only on Apple devices and is often cited by users as something that prevents them from switching to Android. Migicovsky says Beeper should allow iMessage to work on Android, Windows and Linux, but admits he is “using some tricks” to do this.
And yes, iMessage works even on Android, Windows and Linux using some tricks 🙂
– Eric Migicovsky (@ericmigi) January 20, 2021
A FAQ on the Beeper website provides a more detailed explanation of what exactly this trick involves. If you have a Mac always online, you can install the Beeper Mac application to act as a bridge, similar to the approach that AirMessage uses. But things get really crazy if you don’t have access to a Mac, at which point Beeper says it will literally send each of its users an “iPhone unlocked with the Beeper app installed” to act as a bridge. At this point, we should probably mention that using Beeper involves paying a $ 10 monthly subscription, which may or may not include the cost of the iPhone.
In case you thought Beeper was kidding, in a follow-up tweet, Migicovsky said he currently has 50 old iPhone 4S on his desk, ready to be recycled for use with Beeper.
If the workaround works as Beeper claims, the result should be a universal chat app that works on MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, offering a unified inbox and the ability to search for messages from each of the 15 services. It is based on the open source Matrix messaging protocol (Migicovsky previously described NovaChat’s relationship with the Matrix as similar to Gmail’s relationship with email) and, although the client application itself is not open source, the bridges that connect you to other chat services are.
Oh, and there’s a dark mode coming in the next Beeper update, of course.
Although the short-term goal is to make it easy to chat with people in different chat apps, eventually Migicovsky talked about the possibility of everyone using the Matrix itself to chat with friends and colleagues, instead of just using it as a bridge between services.
Although Migicovsky says he has been using Beeper as his default chat client for the past two years, it does not appear to be widely available yet. Instead, Beeper asks potential users to fill out a form on his website for an invitation.
Here is the full list of chat services that Beeper currently supports:
- Facebook Messenger
- iMessage
- Android messaging (SMS)
- Telegram
- Day off
- Hangouts
- Skype
- IRC
- Matrix
- Discord
- Signal
- Beeper Network