Beeper has been offering a unified messaging platform for a few years, allowing users to open a single app to communicate with contacts via SMS, Google Chat, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, and perhaps most importantly, iMessage.
Until this week, Android users who wanted to use Beeper to send “blue bubble” messages to iMessage users had their messages routed through a Mac or iOS device. Now Beeper has launched a new app called Pepper mini It handles everything on the device, without the need for an iPhone or Mac bridge. Beeper Mini is available now on the Google Play Store and offers a 7-day free trial. After that, it will cost you $2 per month to continue using. to update: On Friday, December 8, Beeper Mini stopped working, just days after launch, and before anyone had time to use the free trial. Founder Eric Migicowski tells Techcrunch that all signs point to Apple finding a way to disrupt the service.
In short, Pepper Mini He was It is designed to allow Android users to interact with iMessage by offering some key features:
- Your messages should appear as blue bubbles.
- Instead of your email address, iMessage users must now show your Android phone number.
- Your messages are not relayed through a remote Mac server before being sent to iMessage.
- You don’t need an Apple ID, so you don’t have to give Beeper your Apple login details (if you have any).
- All messages are end-to-end encrypted so that Apple or Beeper cannot decrypt them and the encryption keys remain on your device.
- Supported iMessage features include:
- Group conversations
- Share high-resolution photos, videos and voice messages
- Read receipts and writing indicators
- Respond to topics
- Stickers and GIFs
So how can the Beeper Mini achieve all this in a standalone Android app, when the company previously had to rely on a Mac in the cloud?
The company explains the method it uses in a blog post, but in short, Beeper says a security researcher reverse-engineered the “iMessage protocol and encryption,” so that “all messages sent and received by the Beeper Mini Android app are sent directly to Apple’s servers” and “the encryption keys needed to encrypt These messages never leave your phone.”
By the way, this security researcher is a high school student working for jjtech, and he was hired by Beeper after he showed the company his code. A proof-of-concept Python script is also available on Github if you want to run it to send messages to iMessage from a computer.
Overall, it feels like a big step forward in bridging the gap between Android and iMessage. But because the Beeper Mini doesn’t use the Matrix protocol that the original Beeper app used, and was instead built from entirely new code, it doesn’t currently support all 15 chat services that the original app supports.
At launch, the Beeper Mini can Just Send messages to and from iMessage and other Beeper Mini users. But the product roadmap includes adding support for SMS, WhatsApp, and Signal in the short term, and support for Matrix and 10 other non-encrypted chat networks in the future.
In the meantime, the original Beeper app (which required a Mac server) has been renamed Beeper Cloud, and you can sign up for a waitlist if you’d like a chance to use that service.
The Beeper Mini does not have a waiting list. It’s available to anyone who wants to sign up for a free trial and/or pay $2 per month to send blue chat bubbles from an Android phone.
Eventually, Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini will be merged, once the full feature set has been migrated to the new application.
Wondering if and when Apple will sue Beeper? That’s certainly a possibility, but Beeper founder Eric Migicovsky points out that the company is careful to avoid using any Apple trademarks, and that there is protection in US law for reverse engineering systems for interoperability purposes.
It’s also possible that Apple will change the way iMessage works to prevent reverse-engineered apps like Beeper Mini from working. But that would likely take a long time, and could be a risky move for Apple, since it could also cut off iMessage support on older Apple devices.
to update: Or maybe this is something Apple can do within days. At this point, it’s not clear what the future of the Beeper Mini is. This may be the beginning of a game of cat and mouse. Or maybe this will be the end, and Beeper will have to get back to the Mac-in-the-cloud business.
Beeper isn’t the first company to try an Android-to-iMessage service. But it’s one of the first companies to promise a way to do this without relying on a remote server, while ensuring your messages remain end-to-end encrypted (something Nothing Chats and Sunbird failed to do).
This article was first published on December 5, 2023 and was most recently updated on December 8, 2023.