I get my friends to install Signal instead.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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My friends started getting rid of Signal when Signal dropped SMS support. As soon as it stopped being the default SMS application, it got uninstalled. Nice own goal.
Now Signal only lives on for me due to the signal-cli project. Once I can find a working google-messages cli setup to send and receive reports to/from a specific device , goodbye Signal 😿
My impression was that Signal dropped SMS integration because it was being used to trick users who really needed security into thinking they were having secure chats when they really weren't. Given that enabling reliable secure chat is the reason for Signal's existence, that was a pretty bad problem.
90+% of my mobile and desktop chat with real-world friends is via Signal. I use SMS with friends who don't have modern phones, with relatives who are mentally impaired, and with businesses.
That was and is a legitimate concern, and I totally stand with their decision. But it could have been handled by making changes to the user interface, blue send button is encrypted , red send button is plain text. By removing sms support people who are unable to use multiple apps moved to other options.
Cannot get grandma to use three different communication apps.
Well it was the signal teams toy , we were just allowed to play with it. 🤷
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Sms, now that's a word I didn't hear for a long time
I'd rather use SMS than Whatsapp. I also use Signal and am open to use any open source alternative but most people don't and aren't so the thing we have in common is SMS.
It's fairly popular in the US still for example.
OK. But most of NA uses SMS instead of some Meta product to message with.
I'll switch to something else when Canada gets data plans that don't suck, but until then I am going to make use of the unlimited SMS on my plan.
Yeah. Only use for me is shitty 2FA. Just let me use an app for god's sake.
Google Messages, any browser works.
There is also a Google messages application, that can be minimised to tray. It is just a browser wrapper, but at least saves you the hassle of opening and closing and logging in everytime.
I have Thunderbird opened constantly, so I just open Google Messages in one of the tabs in it. Only problem is that it does not show any notifications, but I get them through KDE Connect.
Excluding KDE connect? I just don't then...
What bugs are you encountering with KDE Connect?
Most of the time I can't even send a message with it - I'll type the message out, click send and... nothing. No indication of error, no indication of success. There's also an issue with loading the message history right after launch. A lot of times it doesn't work or only works partially. App on the phone has full permissions, set to unrestricted battery, etc.
Do you have a crapload of messages stored on your phone? It took a really long time to load my messages the first time, then it was usable
Beeper bridges sms to matrix
I have signed up to Beeper's waiting list. I hope I won't have to wait too long...
There are multiple ways to bridge SMS to XMPP. Works nicely in my experience.
If you are US or Canada based this is also worth a look: https://jmp.chat/
I used Google Messages directly for a while, but then a Matrix bridge that uses Google Messages was released, so now I use that. If you want to try it, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy makes it really easy to self-host, but if you don't want to do that, something like Beeper can probably do it.
Can it handle MMS, pictures, etc?
Yes, and also RCS.
There used to be a time where you could email PhoneNumber@carrier.com
no clue if that still works or even if that was an actual thing and not a fever dream
This is what I currently use since it's free.
I don't understand why people in this thread try to send sms through the mobile network, I'm confused.
Is this not available outside Canada?
I don't know what it's like in Canada, but in the US tons of people use MVNOs instead of straight subscribing to one of the big 3 carriers, so guessing what the domain name for each one, or getting everybody to text your email so you can find out, is just tedious.
I use that for my NAS to "text" my phone if the power goes out and it shuts down gracefully on the UPS.
Most of my contacts are on Signal. So I tend to use Signal desktop. It's not the best desktop application but it works well for what I use it for.
When I'm at work I sometimes just use scrcpy over WiFi and leave my phone in my bag. That way I SMS but also all of the other apps.
I had a 3g modem in my cisco router that I used to use for that, but when they shut down the 3g network I was never able to find another cheap sms-only service for the 4g version of the cisco modem. (So I switched to wifi & xmpp.)
I wrote my own software to use it, talking to the raw modem interface. Which, interestingly, uses an extension of the old "AT" modem command set. Weird.
Being able to write shell scripts that access sms is fantastic, I miss it.
Personally, I transitioned my entire family and friends to use my Google Voice number years ago. GV doesn't support RCS still, which is annoying, but otherwise it works great. When my phone broke at the beginning of this year I was still able to send and receive texts from everyone.
Obviously, if you don't trust Google this would be a non-starter though.
Wait it doesn't support RCS? Isn't google the one heavily pushing RCS?
Yep. Google Voice is the forgotten step-child that Google only remembers exists once every few years, randomly pushing a wave of updates, and then nothing(don't let the bi-weekly bug fix updates fool you).
Though in a way I don't mind, since they're still providing the service for free, with zero ads, for over a decade. I'm convinced at this point that it's the pet project of some higher up that likes the service and manages to sweep any maintenance costs under the rug so the bean counters never try to kill it.
That's probably the last remaining service from when Google was cool.
I don't because I prefer to keep my ecosystems separate.
Pushbullet works great for exactly this
I just checked out Spacebar. Message did not deliver and phone call only opens dialer on the phone with the number entered.
I use Pulse SMS. It has cross platform sybc for every major os, and has a decent feature set. Pretty sure its an electron app though.