If you’re frazzled from ping-ponging among a bunch of apps to check your chat messages, let me suggest a balm for your addled brain.
I’m a fan of Beeper, a mostly free app with a single inbox to read and reply to chats and direct messages from about a dozen services, including Google’s texting app for Android phones, WhatsApp, Slack, Meta’s Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
Think of Beeper like a Marie Kondo that wrangles your DMs and brings a measure of tidiness to your digital communications.
Beeper, which started an app remodeling this month, isn’t right for everyone. Perhaps its biggest shortcoming is that Beeper’s unified inbox doesn’t include chats from iMessage after a bitter disagreement with Apple.
If you can deal with flaws and are eager to stop checking multiple chat apps regularly, give Beeper a shot.
And even if you never use it, Beeper is a chance to reflect on why you have to use the same chat app as your buddy when email doesn’t work that way.
What makes Beeper handy
Beeper’s premise is simple: It pulls your chat messages into one place.
If different people message you in Messenger, Discord, WhatsApp and LinkedIn DMs, the messages can all show up in Beeper as a consolidated stream. You can read and respond in the Beeper app.
If you use only one or two messaging apps, Beeper is probably a skip. But consider it if you regularly hopscotch to three or more apps for chats and direct messages, or if you wind up mindlessly scrolling Instagram every time you pop in to read one DM there.
I don’t use Beeper to pull in messages from my most commonly used communications apps, including Signal and Google Messages, which is the texting app that’s standard on most Android phones. Partly, I’m worried about the security of sensitive messages that flow through Beeper. Beeper has previously provided details about the encryption of chats.
Even without using Beeper exclusively for chatting, I was thrilled to turn off notifications for Instagram, LinkedIn, X and WhatsApp and just get Beeper notifications for the messages I receive in those apps.
Not everyone loves Beeper. In app store reviews and Reddit forums, some people complain about hiccups, including that Beeper repeatedly disconnects from messaging services. Others don’t like that Beeper lacks some common chat app features including complex emoji-like “stickers” and dot indicators that someone else is typing a message.
Kishan Bagaria, a Beeper co-founder, said the company is working on fixing technical issues affecting what he said is a small number of users. Beeper, which is owned by Silicon Valley internet firm Automattic, is working on adding features, Bagaria said.
It’s mostly free to use, but it plans to charge a subscription fee for some extra feature like multiple accounts on the same chat app. The app is available for iPhones, Android phones and computers.
Related
The Seattle Times is launching a WhatsApp channel
Chats should be as open as email
We’re used to the sprawl of digital communications, but it’s nuts if you stop to think about it.
Email doesn’t require everyone you message to all use the same app. If you call someone on the telephone, you don’t each have to use the same phone model.
But with communications apps, you live inside their walled gardens that don’t easily interact with one another.
If you want to chat with a friend who uses WhatsApp, you also have to use WhatsApp. If you get DMs from professional contacts on LinkedIn, you must use that app to read them. You can text between iPhones and Android phones, but you get green bubbles and other flaws.
“That’s the way the market has evolved, but from a user’s perspective a lot of this makes very little sense,” said Johannes Ernst, a Silicon Valley technologist who is an advocate for interoperable social networks. “The only thing I want to do is talk to you.”
Ernst is a proponent of open social networks that let you read, like and reply to people’s posts no matter which service they’re using. He said Beeper fits this concept, often called the “fediverse,” for chat apps.
And Beeper’s embrace of chat apps that play well together has some support from regulators.
The European Union has started to require big chat apps to let people pick one app and still receive messages from others. The regulation is in early stages. The Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple also piggybacked on Beeper’s complaints that Apple is making chat apps on the iPhone worse to hold back competition.
Apple has previously said it will “vigorously” contest the government’s antitrust lawsuit. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Beeper.
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.