Conversations is an open source XMPP/Jabber client for Android

Overview

Conversations

Conversations: the very last word in instant messaging

chat on our conference room build status

Google Play

screenshots

Design principles

  • Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or privacy
  • Rely on existing, well established protocols (XMPP)
  • Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)

Features

  • End-to-end encryption with OMEMO or OpenPGP
  • Send and receive images as well as other kind of files
  • Encrypted audio and video calls (DTLS-SRTP)
  • Share your location
  • Send voice messages
  • Indication when your contact has read your message
  • Intuitive UI that follows Android Design guidelines
  • Pictures / Avatars for your Contacts
  • Synchronizes with desktop client
  • Conferences (with support for bookmarks)
  • Address book integration
  • Multiple accounts / unified inbox
  • Very low impact on battery life

XMPP Features

Conversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called XEP's. Conversations supports a couple of these to make the overall user experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not support these extensions; therefore to get the most out of Conversations you should consider either switching to an XMPP server that does or — even better — run your own XMPP server for you and your friends. These XEP's are:

FAQ

General

How do I install Conversations?

Conversations is entirely open source and licensed under GPLv3. So if you are a software developer you can check out the sources from GitHub and use Gradle to build your apk file.

The more convenient way — which not only gives you automatic updates but also supports the further development of Conversations — is to buy the App in the Google Play Store.

Buying the App from the Play Store will also give you access to our beta test.

I don't have a Google Account but I would still like to make a donation

I’m listing several options to support me financially on my website. Among other things Liberapay, GitHub Sponsors and bank transfer.

How do I create an account?

XMPP, like email, is a federated protocol, which means that there is not one company you can create an official XMPP account with. Instead there are hundreds, or even thousands, of providers out there. One of those providers is our very own conversations.im. If you don’t like to use conversations.im use a web search engine of your choice to find another provider. Or maybe your university has one. Or you can run your own. Or ask a friend to run one. Once you've found one, you can use Conversations to create an account. Just select register new account on server within the create account dialog.

Domain hosting

Using your own domain not only gives you a more recognizable Jabber ID, it also gives you the flexibility to migrate your account between different XMPP providers. This is a good compromise between the responsibilities of having to operate your own server and the downsides of being dependent on a single provider.

Learn more about conversations.im Jabber/XMPP domain hosting.

Running your own

If you already have a server somewhere and are willing and able to put the necessary work in you can run your own XMPP server.

As of 2019 we recommend you use ejabberd. The default configuration file already enables everything you need to pass the Conversations Compliance Suite. Make sure your Linux distribution ships a fairly recent version.

With a little bit of effort Prosody can be configured to support all necessary extensions as well. However you will have to rely on so called Community Modules of varying quality. Prosody can be interesting to people who like to modify their server and create / prototype own modules.

Performance wise - for small deployments - both ejabberd and Prosody should be fine.

Where can I set up a custom hostname / port

Conversations will automatically look up the SRV records for your domain name which can point to any hostname port combination. If your server doesn’t provide those please contact your admin and have them read this. If your server operator is unwilling to fix this you can enable advanced server settings in the expert settings of Conversations.

I get 'Incompatible Server'

As regular user you should be picking a different server. The server you selected is probably insecure and/or very old.

If you are a server administrator you should make sure that your server provides either STARTTLS or XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS.

On rare occasions this error message might also be caused by a server not providing a login (SASL) mechanism that Conversations is able to handle. Conversations supports SCRAM-SHA1, PLAIN, EXTERNAL (client certs) and DIGEST-MD5.

I get 'Bind failure'. What does that mean?

Some Bind failures are transient and resolve themselves after a reconnect.

When trying to connect to OpenFire the bind failure can be a permanent problem when the domain part of the Jabber ID entered in Conversations doesn’t match the domain the OpenFire server feels responsible for. For example OpenFire is configured to use the domain a.tld but the Jabber ID entered is [email protected] where b.tld also points to the same host. During bind OpenFire tries to reassign the Jabber to [email protected]. Conversations doesn’t like that. This can be fixed by creating a new account in Conversations that uses the Jabber ID [email protected].

Note: This is kind of a weird quirk in OpenFire. Most other servers would just throw a 'Server not responsible for domain' error instead of attempting to reassign the Jabber ID.

Maybe you attempted to use the Jabber ID [email protected] because a.tld doesn’t point to the correct host. In that case you might have to enable the extended connection settings in the expert settings of Conversations and set a host name.

I get 'Stream opening error'. What does that mean?

In most cases this error is caused by ejabberd advertising support for TLSv1.3 but not properly supporting it. This can happen if the OpenSSL version on the server already supports TLSv1.3 but the fast_tls wrapper library used by ejabberd not (properly) support it. Upgrading fast_tls and ejabberd or - theoretically - downgrading OpenSSL should fix the issue. A work around is to explicitly disable TLSv1.3 support in the ejabberd configuration. More information can be found on this issue on the ejabberd issue tracker.

I’m getting this annoying permanent notification

Starting with Conversations 2.3.6 Conversations releases distributed over the Google Play Store will display a permanent notification if you are running it on Android 8 and above. This is a rule that it is essentially enforced by the Google Play Store. (You won’t have the problem of a forced foreground notification if you are getting your app from F-Droid.)

However you can disable the notification via settings of the operating system. (Not settings in Conversations.)

The battery consumption and the entire behavior of Conversations will remain the same (as good or as bad as it was before). Why is Google doing this to you? We have no idea.

Android <= 7.1 or Conversations from F-Droid (all Android versions)

The foreground notification is still controlled over the expert settings within Conversations as it always has been. Whether or not you need to enable it depends on how aggressive the non-standard 'power saving' features are that your phone vendor has built into the operating system.

Android 8.x

Long press the permanent notification and disable that particular type of notification by moving the slider to the left. This will make the notification disappear but create another notification (this time created by the operating system itself.) that will complain about Conversations (and other apps) using battery. Starting with Android 8.1 you can disable that notification again with the same method described above.

Android 9.0+

Long press the permanent notification and press the info (i) button to get into the App info screen. In that screen touch the 'Notification' entry. In the next screen remove the checkbox for the 'Foreground service' entry.

How do XEP-0357: Push Notifications work?

You need to be running the Play Store version of Conversations and your server needs to support push notifications.¹ Because Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) are tied with an API key to a specific app your server can not initiate the push message directly. Instead your server will send the push notification to the Conversations App server (operated by us) which then acts as a proxy and initiates the push message for you. The push message sent from our App server through FCM doesn’t contain any personal information. It is just an empty message which will wake up your device and tell Conversations to reconnect to your server. The information sent from your server to our App server depends on the configuration of your server but can be limited to your account name. (In any case the Conversations App server won't redirect any information through FCM even if your server sends this information.)

In summary Google will never get hold of any personal information besides that something happened. (Which doesn’t even have to be a message but can be some automated event as well.) We - as the operator of the App server - will just get hold of your account name (without being able to tie this to your specific device).

If you don’t want this simply pick a server which does not offer Push Notifications or build Conversations yourself without support for push notifications. (This is available via a gradle build flavor.) Non-play store source of Conversations like the Amazon App store will also offer a version without push notifications. Conversations will just work as before and maintain its own TCP connection in the background.

You can find a detailed description of how your server, the app server and FCM are interacting with each other in the README of the Conversations App Server.

¹ If you use the Play Store version you do not need to run your own app server. Your server only needs to support the server side of XEP-0357: Push Notifications and XEP-0198: Stream Management. The prosody server modules are called mod_cloud_notify and mod_smacks. The ejabberd server modules are called mod_push and mod_stream_mgmt.

But why do I need a permanent notification if I use Google Push?

FCM (Google Push) allows an app to wake up from Doze which is (as the name suggests) a hibernation feature of the Android operating system that cuts the network connection and also reduces the number of times the app is allowed to wake up (to ping the server for example). The app can ask to be excluded from doze. Non push variants of the app (from F-Droid or if the server doesn’t support it) will do this on first start up. So if you get exemption from Doze, or if you get regular push events sent to you, Doze should not pose a threat to Conversatons working properly. But even with Doze the app is still open in the background (kept in memory); it is just limited in the actions it can do. Conversations needs to stay in memory to hold certain session state (online status of contacts, join status of group chats, …). However with Android 8 Google changed all of this again and now an App that wants to stay in memory needs to have a foreground service which is visible to the user via the annoying notification. But why does Conversations need to hold that state? XMPP is a statefull protocol that has a lot of per-session information; packets need to be counted, presence information needs to be held, some features like Message Carbons get activated once per session, MAM catch-up happens once, service discovery happens only once; the list goes on. When Conversations was created in early 2014 none of this was a problem because apps were just allowed to stay in memory. Basically every XMPP client out there holds that information in memory because it would be a lot more complicated trying to persist it to disk. An entire rewrite of Conversations in the year 2019 would attempt to do that and would probably succeed however it would require exactly that; a complete rewrite which is not feasible right now. That’s by the way also the reason why it is difficult to write an XMPP client on iOS. Or more broadly put this is also the reason why other protocols are designed as or migrated to stateless protocols (often based on HTTP); take for example the migration of IMAP to JMAP.

Conversations doesn’t work for me. Where can I get help?

You can join our conference room on [email protected]. A lot of people in there are able to answer basic questions about the usage of Conversations or can provide you with tips on running your own XMPP server. If you found a bug or your app crashes please read the Developer / Report Bugs section of this document.

I need professional support with Conversations or setting up my server

I'm available for hire. Contact information can be found on my website.

How does the address book integration work?

The address book integration was designed to protect your privacy. Conversations neither uploads contacts from your address book to your server nor fills your address book with unnecessary contacts from your online roster. If you manually add a Jabber ID to your phones address book Conversations will use the name and the profile picture of this contact. To make the process of adding Jabber IDs to your address book easier you can click on the profile picture in the contact details within Conversations. This will start an "add to address book" intent with the JID as the payload. This doesn't require Conversations to have write permissions on your address book but also doesn't require you to copy/paste a JID from one app to another.

I get 'delivery failed' on my messages

If you get delivery failed on images it's probably because the recipient lost network connectivity during reception. In that case you can try it again at a later time.

For text messages the answer to your question is a little bit more complex. When you see 'delivery failed' on text messages, it is always something that is being reported by the server. The most common reason for this is that the recipient failed to resume a connection. When a client loses connectivity for a short time the client usually has a five minute window to pick up that connection again. When the client fails to do so because the network connectivity is out for longer than that all messages sent to that client will be returned to the sender resulting in a delivery failed.

Instead of returning a message to the sender both ejabberd and prosody have the ability to store messages in offline storage when the disconnecting client is the only client. In prosody this is available via an extra module called mod_smacks_offline. In ejabberd this is available via some configuration settings.

Other less common reasons are that the message you sent didn't meet some criteria enforced by the server (too large, too many). Another reason could be that the recipient is offline and the server doesn't provide offline storage.

Usually you are able to distinguish between these two groups in the fact that the first one happens always after some time and the second one happens almost instantly.

Where can I see the status of my contacts? How can I set a status or priority?

Statuses are a horrible metric. Setting them manually to a proper value rarely works because users are either lazy or just forget about them. Setting them automatically does not provide quality results either. Keyboard or mouse activity as indicator for example fails when the user is just looking at something (reading an article, watching a movie). Furthermore automatic setting of status always implies an impact on your privacy (are you sure you want everybody in your contact list to know that you have been using your computer at 4am‽).

In the past status has been used to judge the likelihood of whether or not your messages are being read. This is no longer necessary. With Chat Markers (XEP-0333, supported by Conversations since 0.4) we have the ability to know whether or not your messages are being read. Similar things can be said for priorities. In the past priorities have been used (by servers, not by clients!) to route your messages to one specific client. With carbon messages (XEP-0280, supported by Conversations since 0.1) this is no longer necessary. Using priorities to route OTR messages isn't practical either because they are not changeable on the fly. Metrics like last active client (the client which sent the last message) are much better.

Unfortunately these modern replacements for legacy XMPP features are not widely adopted. However Conversations should be an instant messenger for the future and instead of making Conversations compatible with the past we should work on implementing new, improved technologies and getting them into other XMPP clients as well.

Making these status and priority optional isn't a solution either because Conversations is trying to get rid of old behaviours and set an example for other clients.

Translations

Translations are managed on Transifex. If you want to become a translator Please register on transifex, apply to join the translation team and then step by our group chat on [email protected] and introduce yourself to iNPUTmice so he can approve your join request.

How do I backup / move Conversations to a new device?

On the one hand Conversations supports Message Archive Management to keep a server side history of your messages so when migrating to a new device that device can display your entire history. However that does not work if you enable OMEMO due to its forward secrecy. (Read The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016 especially the section on encryption.)

As of version 2.4.0 an integrated Backup & Restore function will help with this, go to Settings and you’ll find a setting called Create backup. A notification will pop-up during the creation process that will announce you when it's ready. After the files, one for each account, are created, you can move the Conversations folder (if you want your old media files too) or only the Conversations/Backup folder (for OMEMO keys and history only) to your new device (or to a storage place) where a freshly installed Conversations can restore each account. Don't forget to enable the accounts after a successfull restore.

This backup method will include your OMEMO keys. Due to forward secrecy you will not be able to recover messages sent and received between creating the backup and restoring it. If you have a server side archive (MAM) those messages will be retrieved but displayed as unable to decrypt. For technical reasons you might also lose the first message you either sent or receive after the restore; for each conversation you have. This message will then also show up as unable to decrypt, but this will automatically recover itself as long as both participants are on Conversations 2.3.11+. Note that this doesn’t happen if you just transfer to a new phone and no messages have been exchanged between backup and restore.

In the vast, vast majority of cases you won’t have to manually delete OMEMO keys or do anything like that. Conversations only introduced the official backup feature in 2.4.0 after making sure the OMEMO self healing mechanism introduced in 2.3.11 works fine.

WARNING: Be sure to know your accounts passwords or find ways to reset them before doing the backup as the files are encrypted using those passwords and the Restore process will ask for them.
WARNING: Do not use the restore backup feature in an attempt to clone (run simultaneously) an installation. Restoring a backup is only meant for migrations or in case you’ve lost the original device.

Conversations is missing a certain feature

I'm open for new feature suggestions. You can use the issue tracker on GitHub. Please take some time to browse through the issues to see if someone else already suggested it. Be assured that I read each and every ticket. If I like it I will leave it open until it's implemented. If I don't like it I will close it (usually with a short comment). If I don't comment on an feature request that's probably a good sign because this means I agree with you. Commenting with +1 on either open or closed issues won't change my mind, nor will it accelerate the development.

You closed my feature request but I want it really really badly

Just write it yourself and send me a pull request. If I like it I will happily merge it if I don't at least you and like minded people get to enjoy it.

I need a feature and I need it now!

I am available for hire. Find contact information on my website.

Security

Why are there two end-to-end encryption methods and which one should I choose?

  • OMEMO works even when a contact is offline, and works with multiple devices. It also allows asynchronous file-transfer when the server has HTTP File Upload. However, OMEMO not widely support and is currently implemented only by a handful of clients.
  • OpenPGP (XEP-0027) is a very old encryption method that has some advantages over OMEMO but should only be used by people who know what they are doing.

How do I use OpenPGP

Before you continue reading you should note that the OpenPGP support in Conversations is experimental. This is not because it will make the app unstable but because the fundamental concepts of PGP aren't ready for widespread use. The way PGP works is that you trust Key IDs instead of JID's or email addresses. So in theory your contact list should consist of Public-Key-IDs instead of JID's. But of course no email or XMPP client out there implements these concepts. Plus PGP in the context of instant messaging has a couple of downsides: It is vulnerable to replay attacks and it is rather verbose.

To use OpenPGP you have to install the open source app OpenKeychain and then long press on the account in manage accounts and choose renew PGP announcement from the contextual menu.

OMEMO is grayed out. What do I do?

OMEMO is only available in 1:1 chats and private (members-only, non-anonymous) group chats. Encrypting public group chats makes little to no sense since anyone (including a hypothetical attacker) can join and a user couldn’t possibily verify all participants anyway. Furthermore for a lot of public group chat it is desirable to give new comers access to the full history.

OMEMO doesn’t work. I get a 'Something went wrong' message in the 'Trust OMEMO Fingerprints' screen.

OMEMO has two requirements: Your server and the server of your contact need to support PEP. Both of you can verify that individually by opening your account details and selecting Server info from the menu. The appearing table should list PEP as available. The second requirement is that the initial sender needs to have access to the published key material. This can either be achieved by having mutual presence subscription (you can verify that by opening the contact details and see if both check boxes Send presence updates and Receive presence updates are checked) or by using a server that makes the public key material accessible to anyone. In the Compliance Tester this is indicated by the 'OMEMO' feature. Since it is very common that the first messages are exchanged before adding each other to the contact list it is desirable to use servers that have 'OMEMO support'.

How does the encryption for group chats work?

OMEMO

OMEMO encryption works only in private (members only) conferences that are non-anonymous. Non-anonymous (being able to discover the real JID of other participants) is a technical requirement to discover the key material. Members only is a sort of arbitrary requirement imposed by Conversations. (see 'OMEMO is grayed out')

The server of all participants need to pass the OMEMO Compliance Test. In other words they either need to run ejabberd 18.01+ or Prosody 0.11+.

(Alternatively it would also work if all participants had each other in their contact list; But that rarely is the case in larger group chats.)

The owner of a conference can make a public conference private by going into the conference details and hit the settings button (the one with the gears) and select both private and members only.

OpenPGP

Every participant has to announce their OpenPGP key (see answer above). If you would like to send encrypted messages to a conference you have to make sure that you have every participant's public key in your OpenKeychain. Right now there is no check in Conversations to ensure that. You have to take care of that yourself. Go to the conference details and touch every key id (The hexadecimal number below a contact). This will send you to OpenKeychain which will assist you on adding the key. This works best in very small conferences with contacts you are already using OpenPGP with. This feature is regarded experimental. Conversations is the only client that uses XEP-0027 with conferences. (The XEP neither specifically allows nor disallows this.)

What is Blind Trust Before Verification / why are messages marked with a red lock?

Read more about the concept on https://gultsch.de/trust.html

What happened to OTR support?

OTR was removed because it was highly unreliable. It didn’t work with multiple devices and was never really specified to work with XMPP. The codebase was a mess (There was an HTML parser in there for crying out loud to deal with the garbage some OTR clients would send.) Verification was implemented in a non-blocking way. It would tell you if the current session was using an unknown fingerprint but it didn’t actively stopped you from sending messages until you have confirmed the new fingerprint. (Like Conversations would do now with BTBV after verification or when BTBV is turned off.) Considering the previous points there was little to no desire from my point to fix this potential security issue or clean up the code base. Another reason for the removal was that people would use it accidentally even to communicate between two Conversations clients because they read somewhere that OTR is good.

What clients do I use on other platforms

There are XMPP Clients available for all major platforms.

Windows / Linux

For your desktop computer we recommend that you use Gajim. You need to install the plugins OMEMO, HTTP Upload and URL image preview to get the best compatibility with Conversations. Plugins can be installed from within the app.

iOS

Unfortunately we don‘t have a recommendation for iPhones right now. There are three clients available Siskin, ChatSecure and Monal. Each with their own pros and cons.

Development

Beta testing

If you bought the App on Google Play you can get access to the the latest beta version by signing up using this link.

How do I build Conversations

Note: Starting with version 2.8.0 you will need to compile libwebrtc. Instructions can be found on the WebRTC website. Place the resulting libwebrtc.aar in the libs/ directory. The PlayStore release currently uses the stable M90 release and renamed the file name to libwebrtc-m90.aar put potentially you can reference any file name by modifying build.gradle.

Make sure to have ANDROID_HOME point to your Android SDK. Use the Android SDK Manager to install missing dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/inputmice/Conversations.git
cd Conversations
./gradlew assembleConversationsFreeSystemDebug

There are two build flavors available. free and playstore. Unless you know what you are doing you only need free.

Build Status

How do I debug Conversations

If something goes wrong Conversations usually exposes very little information in the UI (other than the fact that something didn't work). However with adb (android debug bridge) you can squeeze some more information out of Conversations. These information are especially useful if you are experiencing trouble with your connection or with file transfer.

To use adb you have to connect your mobile phone to your computer with an USB cable and install adb. Most Linux systems have prebuilt packages for that tool. On Debian/Ubuntu for example it is called android-tools-adb.

Furthermore you might have to enable 'USB debugging' in the Developer options of your phone. After that you can just execute the following on your computer:

adb -d logcat -v time -s conversations

If need be there are also some Apps on the PlayStore that can be used to show the logcat directly on your rooted phone. (Search for logcat). However in regards to further processing (for example to create an issue here on Github) it is more convenient to just use your PC.

I found a bug

Please report it to our issue tracker. If your app crashes please provide a stack trace. If you are experiencing misbehavior please provide detailed steps to reproduce. Always mention whether you are running the latest Play Store version or the current HEAD. If you are having problems connecting to your XMPP server your file transfer doesn’t work as expected please always include a logcat debug output with your issue (see above).

Comments
  • New Logo

    New Logo

    I think I am speaking for everybody when I say that the New Logo sucks! The previous one was just perfect. It was a signature. The new one it's just a cheap copy of a widely used logo by each and every bellow average IM messenger.

    opened by o--- 186
  • Support audio/video calls + encryption

    Support audio/video calls + encryption

    It will be an awesome feature for conversations to support audio/video calls via Jingle-ICE and with ZRTP encryption. The perspective, IMHO, should be in context to be able to communicate with desktop clients too and not only between conversations clients, we all hate that incompatibility in xmpp right?

    From my experience STUN and (!) TURN servers autodiscovery should be implemented, even if TURN relays data through the server, cause UPnP in some cases is nasty.

    If needed, I can provide testing VPS.

    opened by specktator 184
  • Tor support

    Tor support

    Previous discussed in #45.

    Current work

    • [x] Don't bother checking SRV records for .onion domains
    • [x] ~~Use Tor for DNS requests~~ (not applicable since we're only doing .onion addresses for now)
    • [x] Remove SOCKS config in favor of Tor only
    • [x] Make sure .onion routing is working
    • [x] Use Tor only for .onion addresses until SRV lookups are implemented in Tor's DNS
    • [x] Don't error on certificate mismatch for .onion; instead, show the warning and let the user choose to pin the invalid cert
    • [x] Add Tor support for HTTP connections
    • [ ] Make sure HTTP connections aren't leaking DNS all over the floor
    • [ ] Add Tor support for Jingle connections

    Possible future improvements

    Possible future improvements:

    • Add a check to see if Orbot is installed and/or started and display an appropriate error if "Always use Tor" is set or we're connecting to a Tor HS.
    • When changing the Tor setting, bounce all non-HS accounts (HS accounts always use Tor).
    • Detect Tor proxy and DNS ports instead of hard coding them (Orbot doesn't have an intent for this yet)
    • Possibly ensure stream isolation when multiple accounts are in use? This may happen anyways; all the circuit building stuff has changed around since the last time I really dug into Tor in depth.
    opened by SamWhited 91
  • Duplicate messages when using stream management

    Duplicate messages when using stream management

    I enabled mod_smacks on my prosody, and now users with Conversations sometimes get duplicate messages when they reconnect. I expect that these are stanzas that got delivered right before the network cut and so the ack never got sent up to the server. It seems like Conversations should be able to detect this case (won't the stanza ids be the same?) and filter them out.

    opened by singpolyma 87
  • Add

    Add "Exit" Button

    Hi! Is there a way to exit the app or at least to log out? This is an important feature for me, I think the user should be able to decide weather he wants to be online or not. It could be a somewhat hidden button to not accidentally log out, but there should be the possibility (imho).

    opened by simonsample 72
  • Changed message bubble appearance

    Changed message bubble appearance

    WORK IN PROGRESS - OPEN DISCUSSION

    Okay, I know this is a difficult topic and most of the changes are a matter of taste. I'm preparing this pull request (so don't merge this in yet) and I am willing to work on it as long as I still have got the feeling the changes have a good chance to make it into the final app.

    Example screenshot

    Older example screenshot (Composed of three screenshots)

    What I tried to do was to improve the overall message layouts in a way that would emphasize incoming messages and provide the user with a much modern overall appearance - without changing the code too much. I also tried to equalize margins and paddings. I made these changes because I - personally - couldn't stand the grey border and dull colors for much longer and I just had enough drive to make the changes by myself, because I believe that's the only way to achieve anything at all. I have yet to check what happens to inline images.

    • I am willing to discuss my changes.
    • I am willing to work on fixes if needed.
    • I am willing to change details.

    Changes could also include settings that would control the "new look".

    This is my first contribution to a foreign project ever and if I did anything wrong, I'm doing this to learn, too. I already learned so much and I would be glad to learn even more, so yay!

    Open tasks:

    • [x] Create and post example screenshots
    • [x] Fix issue with recycled views (message font color)
    • [ ] Inline images are scaled/cropped weirdly
    • [x] Full-width messages
    • [x] Let profile images breathe
    • [ ] Rethink error states
    • [x] Black locks on incoming messages
    • [x] Don't use alpha channel for message text colors
    • [ ] Try to find a less saturated incoming (dynamic?) color
    • [x] Fix incoming link colors
    • [x] Make rounded corners half as big
    • [x] Fix transparency on drop shadows (please be subtle)
    opened by eiszfuchs 54
  • show start orbot dialog

    show start orbot dialog

    This pr tries to solve #1980. It checks the tor status availability by already present account status callbacks in ConversationActivity . It shows a dialog if orbot is not started, and places a gap of a hour between two dialogs to prevent spam.

    opened by harshitbansal05 53
  • Account / Address book integration

    Account / Address book integration

    Hi *,

    As said I've some code floating around to simplify account management and to integrate with the phones address book...

    I'd specifically like to move in:

    • Everything related to "Add Account" from the settings (https://github.com/rtreffer/AsmackService/tree/master/src/com/googlecode/asmack/sync)
    • Everything needed to sync contacts and update the presence in the phone book (https://github.com/rtreffer/AsmackService/tree/master/src/com/googlecode/asmack/contacts)

    Now the important questions:

    • What users (jids) should be moved to the address book?
    • Should/Can we keep groups alive?
    • Should we auto-merge with existing users?
    • Should we slowly query the jids for their info? Or should we be "aggressive"?
    • Should we integrate with the account sync? This would be the perfect moment for a roaster fetch.

    @iNPUTmice opinions?

    Merging / integrating this could take a bit longer.

    opened by rtreffer 48
  • Add expert setting to disable

    Add expert setting to disable "unable to connect" notification entirely

    Please add an expert setting to deactivate those error notifications entirely.

    Some of my friends are rather annoyed by this and told me they want to uninstall Conversations because of those notifications. Those are happening quite often for them because of slow/bad wifi connections.

    (related: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues/1815 )

    opened by tmolitor-stud-tu 46
  • Logo already in use by ChatSecure project

    Logo already in use by ChatSecure project

    Original ChatSecure Logo

    https://github.com/chrisballinger/ChatSecure-iOS/blob/master/media/icon/ipad%402x.png chatsecure logo

    Conversations Logo

    https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/blob/master/res/drawable-xxhdpi/ic_launcher.png conversations logo

    Your app looks awesome and I really like your modern design but I'd appreciate it if you didn't reuse our logo because it might create confusion for end users, especially since both apps are XMPP clients that support OTR.

    Thank you!

    opened by chrisballinger 42
  • Settling the

    Settling the "custom port/IP/hostname" issue once and for all

    _Note to Devs:_ This is not yet another “please implement custom IP/port/hostname” issue, please do not close without consideration. I have read the relevant part in the faqs, and I have read the countless closed issues regarding the subject. -which are listed below-

    The purpose of this issue is to:

    • Consolidate all the closed issues into a single, thorough post. (Which could be linked to from the FAQ in the future)
    • Hopefully end the endless stream of repetitive requests by providing a definitive, detailed answer.
    • Attempt to convince the developers that SRV records are not always the right solution, and that an alternative is needed. I am more than open to be proven wrong.

    For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, please read the preface / background.

    Preface / Background

    Ever since the inception of Conversations, the same feature request had been popping again and again: Some people have their own custom servers, often without a proper DNS address, and often on a non-standard port. They want to be able to connect to them. Other clients such as Xabber provide those users the ability to specify a custom IP address / port to connect to. However, Conversations does not provide this in the UI. Those people cannot connect to their servers unless they setup SRV records.

    This request popped up numerous times: #978 #960 #942 #917 #911 #861 #935 #689 #583 #541 #482 #106

    The current solution

    The current solution is setting up SRV records. Also, there's a non official patch by @kevindelaney which allows this, it can be found here: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/pull/1003

    There are also some exotic, alternative hacky solutions such as modifying Android's /etc/hosts.

    The proposed solution

    The main solution that was proposed in all the closed issues is identical: Add a "custom host/port" field in the UI, just like Xabber. The developers were not too keen about this idea, implying that this is not necessary, and that a proper setup should include SRV records and would not really require this.

    Disadvantages of SRV's

    In this section, I list the shortcomings of SRV records and argue that they are not always the right solution, and that in fact we do need a "custom host/port" option in Conversations, I am more than open to be proven wrong. Also, if I missed a disadvantage, please tell me about it and it will be added.

    • Not everyone has purchased a domain name. This is especially true for small private servers.
    • For those who haven't purchased and domain name, setting up SRV records requires some custom DNS server witchcraft, which is much more complex than just typing a custom host/port in Conversations and is not always feasible.
    • On many home XMPP servers, this solution alone is not viable due to NAT loopback issues. e.g. I can connect to myHomeXmppServer.example.com from the outside world (WAN), but not from my own house (LAN), because the DNS resolution returns my external IP.
    • People who setup external ports that map to different internal ports cannot use the server from the LAN side. (Unless conversation provides them a custom host/port option)

    Disadvantages of a "custom host/port"

    This section has arguments against adding a "custom host/port" field into the Conversations UI. If I missed a disadvantage, please tell me about it, and it will be added.

    • Most use cases break Jabber's federation.
    • If not correctly designed, UX could suffer from menu clutter and might confuse non tech-savvy users. this is resolvable via proper UI design.
    opened by SafwatHalaby 41
  • Ability to go back to chat view after initiating a call

    Ability to go back to chat view after initiating a call

    Thank you for Conversations!!

    When I start an audio call, I am taken to the call screen which says "discovering devices", then "ringing", then finally the call connects. Once connected, it is possible to press a button to display the chat view without disconnecting the call.

    However, while the call is ringing, there appears to be no way to go back to the chat view without disconnecting the call. Pressing the back button disconnects the call.

    Would you be willing to implement the ability to go back to the chat view while a call is ringing?

    opened by josephmturner 0
  • Using Conversation simultanously on two device lead to error

    Using Conversation simultanously on two device lead to error "OMEMO-Nachricht konnte nicht entschlüsselt werden"

    Translated: "OMEMO-Message could not be decrypted" one mobile with Android 8.1 (Conversation 2.11.3+free) the other with Android 11 (Conversation 2.10.10+free). The mobile, where i send the last message, can decrypt the received message.

    opened by bitschieber-1 10
  • Call - no loadspeaker

    Call - no loadspeaker

    I used Conversations app at Realme 7 5g without problems. But now I have Galaxy a53 5g and when I have video call, I can not hear loadly other side, because Conversations using only phone speaker, not load speaker. I noticed, that there was not buttons to load speaker, only bluettooth icon. Button to loadspeaker missing at video and voice call too.

    Can you look at this issue? Phone: Galaxy A53 5g Android OS: 13 Conversations v. 2.11.2-free (f-droid)

    opened by jookk 3
  • OMEMO qrcode could not be scanned/ no reaction after scan

    OMEMO qrcode could not be scanned/ no reaction after scan

    If i try to scan the qrcode from an other users account setting the new key doesn't get added to my account and it is not possible to chat with encryption. There is no visual feedback after scanning the code. the scanning just stops. There is no new key added to the contact.

    This is tested on multiple devices with 3 accounts.

    Version is 2.11.2+free from f-droid.

    opened by fleixi 4
  • Video compression indicator does not disappear

    Video compression indicator does not disappear

    Description: A video gets compressed before sending. During that time, an hourglass indicator in the notification bar is shown and a progress bar displays the status of the compression. After the video is sucessfully compressed, the hourglass indicator and progress bar (at 100%) stay visible forever (until reboot or killing of Conversations).

    Issue might be specific to GrapheneOS ?! (haven't noticed that on stock Android phones...)

    System: Conversations 2.11.0+free: Pixel 5 / GrapheneOS / Android 13

    Hint: The issue exists at least since Conversations v2.10.10, maybe earlier, and is still present in v2.11.0

    Log:

    toggle forced foreground service after receiving event (action=ping)
    ForegroundService: on
    [email protected] send ping (action=ui,lowTimeout=false)
    ConversationsOverviewFragment.onStart()
    ConversationsOverviewFragment.onResume()
    app switched into foreground
    ConversationsOverviewFragment.onPause()
    app switched into background
    toggle forced foreground service after receiving event (action=ping)
    ForegroundService: on
    [email protected] send ping (action=ui,lowTimeout=false)
    app switched into foreground
    ConversationsOverviewFragment.onStart()
    action: android.intent.action.SEND_MULTIPLE
    ConversationFragment.onAttach()
    reInit(hasExtras=true)
    trimming conversation
    scrolledToBottomAndNoPending=true
    jump to first unread message
    guessMimeTypeFromUriAndMime content://media/external/video/media/1000000752 and mime=video/*
    ConversationsOverviewFragment.onDestroyView()
    ConversationFragment.onBackendConnected()
    target size overlay: 165.0 overlay bitmap size was 352
    AxolotlService ([email protected]): Finding devices without session for [email protected]
    ConversationsActivity.commitAttachments() - attaching file to conversations. CHOOSE_FILE/RECORD_VOICE/RECORD_VIDEO
    attachFile: type=2
    [email protected]/Conversations.2U72
    guessMimeTypeFromUriAndMime content://media/external/video/media/1000000752 and mime=video/mp4
    processing file as video
    ForegroundService: on
    received uri permission for content://media/external/video/media/1000000752
    ForegroundService: on
    originalFileSize=50795939 convertedFileSize=1755433
    running updateFileParams
    send file message
    

    (sending itself fails due to bug #4429)

    opened by SW-9000 5
Releases(2.11.2)
Open-source XMPP client for Android

Xabber - XMPP client for Android Open source Jabber (XMPP) client with multi-account support, clean and simple interface. Being both free (as in freed

redsolution OÜ 1.8k Dec 19, 2022
NekoX is an free and open source third-party Telegram client, based on Telegram-FOSS with features added.

NekoX NekoX is an free and open source third-party Telegram client, based on Telegram-FOSS with features added. We are no longer able to update versio

NekoX Dev 3.4k Dec 29, 2022
Open Source Messenger App For Android - Real-time Messaging, Voice and Video Calls

Open Source Messenger App For Android - Real-time Messaging, Voice and Video Calls

mesibo 630 Dec 7, 2022
A glossy Matrix collaboration client for Android.

Element Android Element Android is an Android Matrix Client provided by Element. It is a total rewrite of Riot-Android with a new user experience. Nig

Element (formerly New Vector) 2.6k Dec 30, 2022
Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android

or 1McafEgMvqAVujNLtcJumZHxp2UfaNByqs Telegram-FOSS Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It’s superfast, simple and free. T

null 2k Jan 1, 2023
Official Android client for the Kontalk messaging system

This is the official Android client for the Kontalk messaging system. It always implements the latest protocol.

Kontalk 563 Dec 24, 2022
Telegram client based on official Android sources

Telegram messenger for Android Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It’s superfast, simple and free. This repo contains the

Dmitry Kotov 12 Dec 25, 2022
A open chat application for intradepartmental communications

A open chat application for intradepartmental communications. Made with ??, by the Google Developers Student Club, Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, under the Android Study Jams program 2020-21

Dipesh Joshi 5 Jan 10, 2022
Server/Client Chatting application that allows to choose to chat in a group chat or privately to a specific connected user

ktor_chatting_application Server/Client Chatting application that uses Ktor webs

null 10 Jun 14, 2022
Android Real Time Chat & Messaging SDK

Android Chat SDK Overview Applozic brings real-time engagement with chat, video, and voice to your web, mobile, and conversational apps. We power emer

Applozic 659 May 14, 2022
Kommunicate.io Android Chat SDK for Customer Support

Kommunicate Android Chat SDK for Customer Support An Open Source Android Live Chat SDK for Customer Support Overview Kommunicate provides open source

Kommunicate 68 Jan 3, 2023
A simple library for creating animated warnings/dialogs/alerts for Android.

Noty A simple library for creating animated warnings/notifications for Android. Examples Show me code Show me code Show me code Show me code Show me c

Emre 144 Nov 29, 2022
Android has a built in microphone through which you can capture audio and store it , or play it in your phone. There are many ways to do that but with this dialog you can do all thats with only one dialog.

# Media Recorder Dialog ![](https://img.shields.io/badge/Platform-Android-brightgreen.svg) ![](https://img.shields.io/badge/Android-CustomView-blue.sv

Abdullah Alhazmy 73 Nov 29, 2022
Email-based instant messaging for Android.

Delta Chat Android Client This is the Android client for Delta Chat. It is available on F-Droid and the Google Play Store. The APK can also be downloa

Delta Chat 897 Jan 2, 2023
The most beautiful SMS messenger for Android

QKSMS QKSMS is an open source replacement to the stock messaging app on Android. It is currently available on the Google Play Store and on F-Droid Rep

Moez Bhatti 3.9k Dec 30, 2022
Sample Android App for WebRTC with Firebase as backend

Simple Demo App for Android WebRTC video call using Firebase Realtime Database as Signalling server.

Devesh Chaudhari 19 Dec 17, 2022
A hybrid chat android application based on the features of Instagram and Whatsapp having UI just as Telegram.

A hybrid chat android application based on the features of Instagram and Whatsapp having UI just as Telegram.

Ratik Tiwari 1 May 22, 2022
A private-chat-only Android App for Secure Scuttlebutt

Tremola README Tremola is a Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) client for Android that only supports private chat. Tremola aims at having the same functionality

Computer Networks Group 29 Oct 30, 2022
💙 Android sample Avengers chat application using Stream Chat SDK based on MVVM (ViewModel, Coroutines, Room, Hilt, Repository) architecture.

Avengers Chat AvengersChat is a demo application based on modern Android tech stacks and Stream Chat SDK. Previews Download Go to the Releases to down

Jaewoong Eum 352 Dec 25, 2022