🌱 ivy's garden

one chat app to rule them all: beeper

yesterday, i was mucking around on the fediverse (i migrated from vivaldi social to lethal lava land). and someone replied to a relatively old post i had.

she offered me a beeper referral code. and thank the heavens, and thanks jo. i can finally move on from the waitlist which i had been waiting about four months on.

i anxiously entered the referral code into beeper; and i was in. i was finally in. i could finally get rid of all my chat apps, especially the puke-green-coloured messenger called whatsapp.

so for the uninitiated: beeper is a chat app touted as 'the best chat app on earth'. and technically it is, since it gathers all the chat apps that also call themselves the best chat app on earth into one interface. it's built on top of matrix and matrix bridges. these matrix bridges allow you to chat with (not limited to):

..so on and so forth. oh and it's a matrix client.

in terms of user experience, it's okay. there's is a bit to be desired, such as calls, a seamless multi-device experience ('unable to decrypt request decryption keys from other sessions', anyone?), and a less ugly mobile app. but apart from that, all is good! messages get sent, messages get read, all the chats are consolidated into this drawer in the side that sorts them out by platform. it's just a solid enough experience.

is it better than using all the dedicated apps for their respective platforms? no. you still have to keep some of them installed, such as signal and whatsapp (and don't forget you cannot get rid of imessage), and you miss out on some platform specific features. is it much more practical to use beeper instead of opening all of your chat apps all at the same time and hunting down your contacts among the sea of chat apps you have installed? absolutely.

go get beeper now (though you will have to wait on the waitlist. of course you can just hit me up on email or get to me over on the fediverse @ivy@lethallava.land if you'd like a beeper referral code so you can get in on this cool stuff faster. (totally not a desperate call to find people to talk to)

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#lostinthesauce