Beeper hands-on: This might be my favorite app ever

Summary

• Everyone uses different messaging apps, including bad ones
• Beeper brings them all together under one roof
• It's an excellent solution, but it can get even better

A few weeks ago, Beeper announced that it was finally opening up access to its app to everyone, after many months of asking users to join a waitlist that seemingly never ended. You may not have heard much about Beeper (outside of the short-lived Beeper Mini app), but it's an app that definitely has its following.

I had signed up for the waitlist in September 2023, but only managed to get in just a few weeks prior to the public launch thanks to an invite from a friend. I had a lot of expectations going into it, but Beeper has frankly met pretty much all of them, and it has made me more excited than I think any app ever has, a feeling that I still have after about a month of using it.

The messaging app problem

Most people use apps that suck

For a while now, I've felt like I cared more about messaging apps than just about everyone else, and finding a truly great one was hard. Having been in long-distance relationships for over a decade, communication was pretty important, and most apps just have very annoying and glaring issues. That all changed when I found Telegram back in late 2014 (it might have been 2015), which was pretty much the perfect messaging app and service. I still believe it's the best messaging platform out there.

The thing is, you can't convince everyone to use the app you want. While Telegram was fantastic for talking to the couple of people I convinced to join, most of my family and friends still used other apps like Discord, WhatsApp, or Messenger (by Meta). That means I had to keep all these apps installed on my phone and computer, and have separate experiences for all them. It uses up more resources and it's just harder to juggle a bunch of apps instead of having everything in one place. It's not fun.

I looked at many "all-in-one" solutions, too, but all of these are basically wrappers for the web versions of each app, so you're still switching contexts and UI, plus notifications aren't always reliable. These solutions just aren't appealing.

Beeper's solution

It's (almost) everything I wanted

The idea of a true all-in-one really got in my head wouldn't leave my head, though, and when I heard of Beeper I immediately signed up for the waitlist. What Beeper does is relatively simple when you break it down. You can sign in to the web versions of most of these apps, and that session is stored on Beeper's servers, which then rely the information back to you through the Beeper app. It relies on a platform called Matrix, which you can set up yourself if you want to have your own server rather than using Beeper's. It supports every major messaging platform out there, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Google Messages (for SMS), and even Discord and Slack.

This is where it differs from those web wrappers, though. Beeper brings all of these services and messages together under one roof. You have a unified inbox, so messages from all these services show up together. But not only that, opening any of these messages uses Beeper's own UI, which is also consistent across every platform. Features like replying to a specific message work the same for every platform, too. Notifications are reliable (though they can be a bit slower than just having the native apps), and you can send and receive files, including voice messages if you're on mobile, up to 100MB, which is on par with the limit on most free messaging platforms. Even typing indicators and read receipts work for platforms that support them.

I can't overstate how much I love this app

Even some things you might expect to be troublesome work fairly well here. A couple of WhatsApp chats I had muted were automatically marked as low priority in Beeper when I first connected the network. For Twitter message requests, those are also marked as low priority, and you'll even see a warning about how replying to the message will accept the request. The experience is also smooth, fast, and intuitive for the most part.

I can't overstate how much I love this app. Having all of these messages in one app, not having to install and open them all on my PC or phone is wonderful and so much easier to manage. Whenever a message comes in on any of these services, Beeper notifies me, so I never have to worry about missing them. And while the 100MB file size limit can be annoying, but most apps wouldn't support that, either. Telegram is the only one I know that does, and I don't mind opening that one from time to time if needed.

What needs to improve

We're so close to perfection

I really think any caveat with Beeper is minor enough to not be a huge deal for me, but there are some parts that don't work perfectly. First off, something I hope Beeper can fix is that my connection to Meta's Messenger goes offline every few days, which gets a bit annoying. I'm not entirely sure why it happens, but I hope that's something that can be figured out, since Messenger is the only platform that does it so consistently.

But, in my eyes, the real limitation of Beeper is that it can't make calls, at least not yet. There are options in the Beeper desktop settings for voice and video, but I can't seem to make calls on it. In fact, Beeper's support pages say calls aren't supported yet, so I'm taking this to mean it's in the works. And I'm very excited for when it does. I think I'd be willing to pay for a subscription (reasonably priced) if it added call support, because then I could delete apps like Meta's Messenger, which I sometimes use to call family.

Another thing is something Beeper can't fix, and that's WhatsApp. While WhatsApp won't log me out randomly, it does require a mobile device to be active with your account, and Beeper alone is only seen as a desktop client for WhatsApp. So, if you want to keep using WhatsApp through Beeper, you need to keep the WhatsApp app on your phone. However, you can disable notifications from it, which helps.

These limitations do mean I can't uninstall all the apps I'd like to, but just the fact that I can have all my messages under one roof is one of the best things that's happened to my messaging habits in many years.

I'm very excited for the future

I think it's very clear by now that I'm a huge fan of Beeper, and I'm very excited for what's next. Beeper for Android recently received a big facelift with an app that's much prettier and faster, and the team has promised similar revamps for the desktop and iOS apps. Beeper has also been acquired by Automattic, owners of WordPress, so hopefully that means there's a lot more money and manpower behind the development to make this the app of my dreams (even though it kind of is that already).

And Beeper is built on an open, decentralized platform, too, which gives me hope that it won't fade away easily. Frankly, I hope it sticks around forever, because it has given me a surge of excitement I haven't had in a long time when it comes to tech.