Does anyone know of an open-source alternative to Google’s “Messages” app, which takes care of SMS/text messages on my phone?
I was looking for open-source alternatives on PlayStore and F-Droid but can’t really find anything – most apps seem to target some extra purpose than simply handling SMSs.
(Edit: I’d like to stay away from the “Simple Mobile Tools” line because I don’t know if it’s open source, and I don’t like the way they promoted some apps – forcing users to update to pro and similar.)
Cheers!
QKSMS all the way, you can schedule messages, block, archive, create back up, change colors. No ads.
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I personnaly use QKSMS. It’s available on F-Droid and it’s quite nice
Not Op, but thanks for the recommendation. I’ve got chomp right now. It’s all right, but I don’t really love it
I used to use all the Simple tools, even paid for them, unfortunately the dev changed monetization to a shitty model and I got locked out.
Since then I moved to QKSMS. Its on F-Droid and despite some initial quirks I’m very happy with it.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] – thank you for QKSMS, it sounds good. Strange because it doesn’t appear with an “SMS” search on F-Droid – but now I got the link :)
Note: I read some users recently complaining about it missing some SMS; let’s see if that’s still a problem.
The play store version is out of date (version 3.9.2, last updated 2021-02-07).
You should get it from F-Droid or Github (version 3.10.1, last updated 2023-01-16/2023-01-19).
Edit: Apparently it was only a small update and it’s still practically abandoned.
This update was very small, just handling a start up crash and an error involving how question marks are handled. I would still consider this project unmaintained.
Cheers, got it from F-Droid (another step in de-googling :)
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Last code update was 28th of October 2021. https://github.com/moezbhatti/qksms - almost two years of no maintenance. They probably just recompiled it for some reason for fdroid.
3.10 is on a separate branch for some reason, but it’s not much
The SMS app from Simple tools is bad anyways. Group messaging is totally messed up. I threw in the towel when i responded to a group message and it sent an individual message to each person in the group.
You can fix that in settings (and I did), but it’s still wild that the default setting for group texts isnt MMS. What I’ve found even more frustrating is that there seems to be no way to make it show you a name on the contacts in a group chat. It only shows the first letter and a random color for each individual person. Can be tough to figure out who’s who even amoung my closest friends just because half their names start with the same letters.
I’m also interested in this since Signal stopped supporting sms for being unsecure…
I wonder if any of these listed alternatives support RCS, SMS/MMS is an incredibly old and insecure
RCS is proprietary. Very unlikely there will ever be an implementation that is open source or foundation driven.
Seriously? The standard that we’ve been finally getting users on is proprietary? You’ve got to be joking
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Rcs isn’t proprietary, google hasn’t given anyone the tools to develop with it on Android.
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I honestly don’t like RCS, because when I send an SMS, I want it to be using that old protocol that doesn’t depend on network functionality. Whereas any real chatting I usually take using more secure apps. SMS for me is “hey, you’re not responding on our normal chat programs, is your wifi dead or you roaming?” kind of situation.
Agree about the security. I don’t use SMS regularly, but some people message me with that in emergency situations, for instance if they don’t have wifi or data. It’s also still used to get temporary authentication codes.
Simple SMS Messanger by SimpleMobileApps: https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.smsmessenger/
QKSMS is the only currently viable open source choice.
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Cheers, I’ll check that too.
Had not heard of Silence, Cheers!
I’d say Silence is abandoned, it hasn’t been updated in 4 years.
Silence hasn’t been updated for 4 years. Don’t touch it.
It’s really annoying they haven’t made an RCS API public. Do you know if they’ve made any statement as to why?
Capitalism
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Simple mobile tools pro version are completely open-source and avaliable for free on fdroid. But of course I also paid on google play to support the developer, then use everything on f-droid.
I’m all for supporting developers. Usually I test an app for a month, and if it works well, I make a regular donation (else I uninstall it).
However, while trying out the free version of “Simple Gallery” from Simple Mobile Tools, they sent an update that suddenly made it only last for 14 days, then you had to upgrade to premium. I simply don’t like this kind of behaviour, that’s why I don’t use their products.
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I don’t know who’s the creator. Here’s the app – you can also see the complaints from some users:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobiletools.gallery
I have installed this app and never had any paywall in simple apps suite
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.thankyou/Yeah there’s a mystery about completely different availability policies by the developer in GPlay and in FDroid…
what’s the mystery? use fdroid.
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Ha that’s a fun mystery!!
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That is really disappointing. Although it is perfectly fine for developer to ask for money, especially for FOSS app. It seems like their communication is not exactly on point.
I guess the best course of action is to try on fdroid, if you like it buy on Gplay (or just donate if it not terribly inconvenient), and continue to use the fdroid version.
Looks like QKSMS is not maintained for ~2 years
About that, see comment by @[email protected] in this thread. Apparently only the GPlay version is unmaintained.
I used to use QKSMS, the only update that has been pushed in the last two years was a very small change in January '23 that corrected an error handling of question marks and fixing a start up crash. It is functionally unmaintained at this point.
The developer has ghosted the project in past years as well, dropped out for over a year but eventually did come back. It’s never been this long of an absence though.
Thank you for the heads-up. I’ve installed it and for now it’s working OK. To be honest I don’t mind that’s unmaintained, if it works (I still use a 10-year old timer app that is just perfect for me, never found the like again).
I know what you mean. I’ve been using a reminder app called “recurrence” that is abandoned and it looks like its from the android 7 days. When you find something that fits the need just right it takes more than lack of updates to prompt a move to something else. Aside from if there are security issues that aren’t getting patched.
Yeah, they’re like works of art - no need to keep adding strokes!
Hmm, latest commit in it’s github repository is from 2021
You won’t be able to use RCS without Google messages
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isn’t signal dropping sms support?
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??? You have a couple on F-Droid that does what it’s supposed to. But in general, should avoid using SMS if you are intending to be privy.
Dump SMS and switch to an app like Signal. Signal offers end to end encryption and features like disappearing messages. As easy to use as any SMS app.
Agree about the security. I use Element/Matrix. I don’t use SMS regularly, but some people message me with that in emergency situations, for instance if they don’t have wifi or mobile data. It’s also still used to get temporary authentication codes.
