This is a great write up. I kind of wish they went into the security aspects of metadata leaking. But otherwise really love this write up
FYI, Conversations, the most popular XMPP client on Android is going to be getting a Material 3 redesign soon-ish. You can check out the "c3" on their Codeberg repo to see where it's at, but from what I've seen, it's promising!
Didn't know about this. That's interesting!
Are you referring to this c3 branch? If so, there havent been any commits or pull requests for a few months now. Is there a timeline posted anywhere for the "soon-ish" release of the redesign?
Yeah I meant the c3 branch, and I have no clue about the timeline the dev is aiming for, though I recall them saying they wanted to release it this year, but that could have changed by now
Thanks for confirming.
XMPP really needs better clients - even the good ones feel dated. Hopefully the timeline was not pushed back too much, if at all, and that this redesign can be the start of modernizing XMPP clients.
Yeah, the XMPP client landscape is pretty bad. Mostly 10+ year old clients that did not have a refreshed UI ever since. The only one I really like and is modern is Dino on Linux. It's a very neat looking client that also happens to be responsive to it works on small screens and even Linux mobiles!
KDE’s Kaiden is modern and ready for Plasma Mobile. Gajim looks modern enough (tho not in small splits). TUIs never really go out of fashion for their crowds.
What is an actual popular client that uses xmpp
On Android and IOS, i like Snikket.
On desktop, Gajim
Conversations, Cheogram, Dino are the ones I've used.
Gajim, Profanity. There’s probably a Weechat plugin. There’s also handful of JS ones, but I like the polish of Movim (and it’s also a client for an entire decentralized social media platform if you want it to be).
Conversations is paid and has like 100k downloads, and it looks like it's from Android kitkat. The other two don't even exist on the app store. Do you consider these to be popular? I'm looking for actual popular apps, just like I can say Element for Matrix.
Wat. Conversations is on F-Droid… and it’s the basis for Blabber, Cheogram, Monocles, etc. It’s the most influential XMPP application in the Android space.
Literally never heard of any of those, or see any community link to them. Is that really what XMPP considers their most bleeding edge clients?
Then you need to meet more communities 😅
Also for the sake of chat, what’s something truly innovative since the heyday of AIM & IRC? There just isn’t many useful bells & whistles to be added in the last decade. The newer XEPs for stickers+message reactions have been out with some new clients picking them up, but these aren’t something fundamentally changing how folks speak.
Double ratchet e2ee and asymmetric communication
I was referring to the experience (encryption is usually felt as something transparent after it’s set up). However both Matrix & XMPP have e2ee even if the implementation isn’t identical (OMEMO allows per device).
What is “asymmetric communication”? Only one side can talk?
Asymmetric communication allows communication when one party is offline. One of the biggest issues with XMPP is both parties need to be online..
https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0203.html
I've not yet had issues with messages not getting delivered when recipient is offline.
Which server do you use that caches messages for you, and how do I know if a given XMPP provider has implemented this functionality?
Also, does it also work with e2ee messages?
I know Prosody does & I’d put money on ejabberd supporting it too but I’ve not looked it up. You can check compliance for Conversations using https://compliance.conversations.im/ which includes message archive management + carbons or use a client that exposes a servers supported XEPs. Yes, it works with encrypted messages.
Pidgin?
Doesn’t support OMEMO for encryption, just OTR which is quite limiting given how most folks tend to chat on multiple devices now.
XMPP is great but the clients are all really bad.
Session is where it's at.
Why does it call XMPP "Chat Standard"?
From the perspective of private users, WhatsApp is the benchmark
Not entirely, there is also Discord
WhatsApp, Signal, & some others use the same open standardization end-to-end encryption. It’s the bare minimum bar for acceptable (but most of these apps require a primary Android/iOS device to hold the key which plays right into that duopoly as well as making smart phones a requirement rather than optional).
Discord has no e2ee, many rooms require phone numbers, the service is proprietary, they have trackers, they send cease & desists to projects wanting to be alternate clients. These are not the hallmarks for privacy or security.
Tbh I have not really encountered people saying they use Discord for privacy reasons, usually it's people complaining about the privacy implications of discord
I don't think it's that meaning of "private" that's meant here. It's private as in personal, rather than an organization
Ahh, i see what you mean. My bad haha
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