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Is there a good messaging app?

1BryGuy2

1BryGuy2

Lurker
Looking for a good & secure Messaging app. Over the past year or 2 I have gotten very frustrated with the original one on my Samsung phone and a couple other ones i have tried.
thanks
 
I have purchased several messaging apps 'cause I'm a sucker for stuff like that, including the afore mentioned Textra. The one I always go back to is QKSMS, open source, and is available at any of the alt repos or the play store.
 
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1BryGuy2 said:
Looking for a good & secure Messaging app. Over the past year or 2 I have gotten very frustrated with the original one on my Samsung phone and a couple other ones i have tried.
thanks
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It might help if you list the actual problems and frustrations you've had with the stock Samsung messaging, and the "couple of other ones" you've tried.

FWIW for SMS and MMS, I'm only using the original messaging app on my Galaxy Note20 Ultra and find no problems with it. Although for my messaging with friends and colleagues, I'm using WeChat and WhatsApp(for friends in the UK and Ireland).
 
I've used a number over the years. Currently back on Textra, which has never given me any trouble, including background usage (far less than some Samsung services that I have disabled every aspect of that it will allow me to). Prior to that I used QKSMS for a year or so, but there was one specific task it couldn't do (can't even remember exactly what) and after having to switch SMS app a couple of times I decided to just use Textra for a while.

But also what do you mean by "secure"? Actual SMS security is what it is independent of the app. Other types of messaging may be more secure, but need the other party to use the same app. And of course any app you give access to your contacts requires you trust the developer (so I will not recommend stuff like Go SMS because that company have proven that they can't be trusted in the past).
 
SMS - Textra, Chomp, Yaata, Google Messages, Chrooma

Chat/SMS - Google Messages

Text through web - Google Messages
 
Slack is hardly a general purpose message app though. Everyone you want to contact has to install it (as with anything other than SMS) and join the same Slack "team" as you to communicate - which in this case will mean a team you create. That is a barrier that other IP-based message services intended for general chat don't have, and the team structure has other consequences (not least of which is that you would be putting everyone who joins in contact with everyone else, which may not be appropriate for a collection of people whose only commonality may be knowing you). It's basically different from a regular message app, and unless you only want to talk to people with a higher tolerance for techy faff than the general public I don't think it will work.

BTW Slack is not an SMS app. SMS is not a general term for messaging, it refers to a specific message protocol used in mobile networks (originally part of the GSM standard). Just pointing this out because mixing terms up like this can cause confusion.
 
For true security, don't depend on any app advertising e2e encryption, just use a run of the mill messaging app and encrypt the text yourself. If the other party isn't interested in putting forth the effort, your comms aren't secure anyway. For mega secure comms, use an irc channel to paste encrypted posts from behind onion.
 
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