By means of over the years there have been many apps that promise a one-stop shop for all your messagesand the latest of which is Beeper: It collects all your conversations from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack, Google Chat, Twitter (or X), and, yes, even iMessage.
The idea so you don’t have to need to waste time jumping from chat app to chat app because Beeper handles everything—all the different standards and protocols are handled behind the scenes for you. Now there is a waiting list for Beeper, but we have access to the app, and we will show you how it works.
connect
When Beeper opens its virtual doors to you, it will ask you to create a new account and then connect all your chat apps to it. In fact, Beeper works like a third-party client app for all the most popular messaging services, and then integrates them all—15 different platforms are supported at the time of writing, including all mayors.
To be united with iMessage, Beeper uses your Apple ID information to log in while you’re on one of its bank of Mac minis, which are then used as a server to relay messages to and from your inbox—this can release some You get warning messages about someone else accessing your account in our experience, but it works.
Whether or not Beeper will be able to maintain this connection to iMessage in the long term — or connection to any supported chat apps — remains to be seen, but it works for now. Two chat connections, Slack and Discord, are labeled as ‘Labs’, which means you won’t get the full functionality you would using dedicated apps.
Beeper itself can be connected to other chat clients through an open source protocol, and everything is end-to-end encrypted (if you connect Beeper services that are also end-to-end encrypted, the all encrypted again). Beeper keeps a zero-access encrypted backup of your chats, but no one at Beeper can access them—if you lose the recovery codes you get when you set up Beeper , your chat backups cannot be restored.
With Beeper servers managing all your communications, you can install Beeper apps on any device to access your chats: You can use Beeper on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. The service is free to use, with a $5-10 Beeper Plus subscription service due at launch. at some point this year.
The ease with which you can connect to your third-party chat apps depends on the app, and whether or not you’ve set up security precautions like two-factor authentication, but you should be up and running. in just a few minutes. Chat apps can be added or removed at any point after the setup process as well.
Use of Beeper
Beeper’s layout on the desktop is pretty straightforward, with the various chat apps you’re connected to listed on the left as icons (these icons can be dragged around if you want to reposition them). You can click on any of these icons to see conversations from a specific app, or you can click on the Beeper app to see them all together in chronological order.
This means that Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Google Chat conversations are all next to each other, with the most recent messages on top. What Beeper doesn’t do is sync contacts across multiple apps—so you don’t, for example, see a long list of chats from your brother covering every messaging app you’ve talked to him on.
Another thing Beeper tries to do is filter low-priority conversations from your main inbox: Consider spam messages and the like. You can also mark conversations as low priority, so you don’t receive notifications for them. More important chats, on the other hand, can be pinned to the top of the conversation list – right-click on conversation threads to pin them, mark them as low priority, or archive it invisibly.
You will find many features of the messenger app are supported, but not all of them. Sending and receiving messages, group chats, pictures and videos, emoji reactions, adding contacts and other basics are all generally good; more complex or advanced features, such as video calls and group polls, are not available. In some cases you may need to return to the original app to complete a task.
Click on the cog icon above the conversation list to go to the Beeper settings. From here you can add or remove chat networks, change how messages are created and displayed, sync your Apple or Google contacts, and more. There is also an auto-archive feature that you can use to remove old messages from the inbox.
Beeper started life as a desktop app, and that interface is still there most of the features are, but apps for Android and iOS Also available: They work the same way as desktop apps, with your conversations listed in chronological order, and your connected apps displayed as icons at the bottom. Beeper also has a comprehensive getting started guide that will come in handy once you work your way up the waitlist.
