RetroFedReliable messenger for family use?
anakin78zHello,
I’ve been self hosting Nextcloud for the last half a year, and my family has been using Nextcloud Talk to communicate. However, as cool it is overall, we suffer from a lot of missed messages. I’ve been keeping an eye on (and contributing to) the Android app, but even with all the updates, it seems like they can’t quite figure out the issue with notifications not appearing consistently. My wife is fed up, so I’m looking for alternatives.
It seems like Matrix is the next logical one to try, but the Android apps have pretty poor reviews. A lot of the self hosted messengers also seem to be more like Slack replacements, rather than focused on family & friend use.
Has anyone had a good experience with a self hosted messenger for family use?
Thanks!
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Grandma uses Signal, it looks like a normal texting app, nothing special
I use Signal because it’s the best balance of privacy and security vs. convenience and reliability I have found. Not self-hosted, but I’ve yet to find a self hosted alternative that is as reliable, especially since I don’t want to set up distributed servers, and it’s one of those things that “just needs to work” or people will abandon it quickly.
And the older people I’ve convinced to use it, like my mom, have had very little trouble adopting it. It helped that RCS messaging is so unreliable on my phone since Google or my carrier keep seeming to break it (likely became I use GrapheneOS), and also for those with iPhones it is way more compatible with itself vs Apple and Google refusing to implement RCS in a way that all features work between them, like message reactions. Without RCS, my mom couldn’t send me decent quality pictures of my niece all the time, and I couldn’t send nice pictures of my outfits to the girl I’m dating, LOL.
My wife and I use Signal. It works well.
Android notifications are notoriously difficult to get right. May I ask how is Nextcloud Talk currently implementing notifications? Is it through ntfy, a background service, or Google’s Firebase? Have you allowed background usage for both the push app and the chat app?
I use Matrix with Continuwuity and Element X, and it’s doable most of the time except for small bugs. If you disable federation, the resource usage should be minimal too. But it also requires a third party for push service which can be unreliable.
On the XMPP side, there is also Snikket which you could look into. It offers both a server (running modified Prosody) and a mobile client (modified Conversations). XMPP can run as an efficient background service on Android, so it’ll receive in-band notifications.
Regardless of options, one of the main problem I’m aware of is that Android variants tend to overkill various background app, leading to missed notifications. I think it’s better to debug on that aspect as well
I believe Nextcloud Talk uses FCM for notifications. The issue doesn’t seem to be on the FCM side, it’s the client marking messages as read incorrectly, or not notifying because it thinks it’s running in the foreground, etc. They’re definitely working on these issues, but my family has lost confidence in it.
I will check out Snikket, thanks!
I ran Snikket for a while a couple of months ago - notifications in the iOS app were late or never arrived till you opened the app.
not necessarily, you can host ntfy or something else yourself too
Hi, ntfy/another unified push backend is the third party. As in: it doesn’t just go between you and your server
well, that’s true, the reason for that is battery efficiency. the chat client does not need to be awaken constantly to receive notifications, a lightweight app can do that which will wake up the chat client when needed. fewer long term network connections, lower idle memory usage, faster routines handling the bare minimum
yeah, it’s consuming. I believe a big part of this is due to Matrix’s HTTP sync-polling being more expensive than simply maintaining a TCP stream (which is what XMPP does)
In fact, since XMPP syncs in the background so well, I use Conversations as a UnifiedPush backend for Matrix. You can find another article here as well
Seconding the XMPP reccomendation- I run Prosody, which has been rock solid and stays up even when other services I run go down. File sharing, E2EE, reactions, voice and video calls- everything you’d expect from a modern messenger. Cheogram or Conversations are great Android clients, and Monal is the iOS client I’d recommend.
What do you use for desktop?
I wonder why not more people choose XMPP. What do you think?
Monal (on a mac)
Marketing, sadly , actually works… plus network-effects
I use Gajim on Windows and Linux, Dino when I need to call, and Monal on Mac. XMPP is older and less trendy at the moment, and it’s a large, partially fragmented ecosystem- that might hold back mainstream adoption. But it’s the horse I’d bet on long-term.
Huh, for some reason I assumed XMPP didn’t support video chat. Does it also support screen sharing or do you need a fake input and send it as regular webcam video?
Signal or Molly are probably going to be your best bets
Just want to note that Molly IS Signal, just a fork of it with some added features, in case OP isn’t aware. Definitly just go for Signal unless you have a specific reason to use Molly.
I like Molly a lot better personally
Molly still have SMS integration? It use to have ability to act as an SMS/MMS client.
Signal and therefore Molly dropped support for SMS
SMS is really insecure so it makes sense
molly has support for unifiedpush, the new messagd ping does not need togo through google. it also has better multi device support, and is available through f-droid with their own repo. location sharing uses osm instead of google maps, but of course signal users will still hand over your shared location data to google
@anakin78z We use xmpp (prosody on the server; a mix of conversations/cheogram/dino/snikket on our phones and laptops). We've got a family chat where the kids share the latest memes, and we message back and forth. We do also have signal (or in my case, Molly) installed, but don't use it that much. My wife just switched phones and signal was unable to transfer stuff from phone phone to the other - in general I find signal annoying to use.
We use matrix for a few years but it was buggy and dumb.
@anakin78z I still have to use Matrix for work. The clients suck (literally every single one I've tried, and I even briefly maintained Neochat for debian) and I routinely get key errors.
That’s pretty cool that you use Matrix for work!
did you try reporting them? they are watching for reports, and they are making automated tests for all cases they receive. you should probably both open an issue in the client repo, and then use the “report a problem” button in the client and paste the github issue link. before you send the report open the chat with the decryption error, or try to reproduce it with a new message if you can, so that they can get better logs. probably also toggle on the “contact me”.
if you get a new message that can’t be decrypted, send a report from the client soon. don’t need to open a different issue if you don’t want.
Thanks for the info. My wife and I tried Signal a while back and didn’t care for it.
I’m trying to get xmpp going today, even just as a test. 🤞
What about it didn’t you like? I have no investment in Signal, my curiosity is just piqued since my wife and I use it.
It wasn’t one specific thing. We were switching from Facebook Messenger, and found ourselves not wanting to use it all that much, often falling back to Messenger. For me, personally, I also didn’t like that it didn’t have a web client.
Fair enough. Signal does ship desktop clients for Windows, Mac, and even Linux; I’m actually using the Linux desktop client to chat with my wife right now.
It’s something 🤷
I managed to get my immediate family all on Signal, so that’s my vote!
Correct. Just use Signal. Problem solved.
Me too, all family and friends use signal if they want to chat with me.
xmpp. don’t matrix, it causes selfhosting-phobia for normies because its ui sucks. i had a friend try matrix with me for a while and now they’re never trying another foss messenger again unless its proved to be very good.
Does it have to be self-hosted? I’ve had tons of problems with Matrix. Many fewer issues with XMPP.
Chatmail is probably the easiest and best bet for reliability. Deltachat is the OG but I like Arcanechat, it’s a fork with more features.
I guess it doesn’t have to be, but I really like the idea of having control over the data, and not handing it over to some other entity, even if they say they’re not evil. It just seems like communication without a 3rd party in between is a good idea, so I’m trying to make that work for now.
+1 for XMPP
I’m currently using a public server until I get my own (Raspberry Pi based) Prosody server running
Never had a missed notification / message and video calls are great too… even Grandma can use it
Using Conversations (Android) and Monal (ios)
I host snikket (which is built on top of prosody) for my family and (especially) my pre-teen children and their friends. Pretty happy with it, all things considered.
Definitely decentralization is a good idea, but it also adds a layer of complexity that many are unable to grasp. Signal is always the easiest but I have major concerns about their longevity.
Yea, we tried Signal a while back, but for whatever reason we didn’t care for it.
https://snikket.org/ works well with XMPP under the hood.
snikket for 2 years now. love the software!
Also snikket for xmpp
I’ve been doing research on this and came down to two.
simplex won because of the robust encryption and selfhosted option.
a close contender was stoneage. I liked all it took was an S3 bucket. I didn’t like that it hasn’t been updated in 3 years.
SimpleX is going away I thought. Any reason you don’t want to use Signal, or setup XMPP/Jabber/Snikket/Prosody, etc.
signal has privacy problems.
xmpp/jabber/snikket have encryption and security problems.
from what I can see simplex has everything I need.
My hesitation to using simplex is the selfhosting aspect of it. I’ve been researching the simplex protocol (SMP) and have been thinking out ways to develop a serverless version of it, that way you don’t get charged for something that’s not being used if you host it in the cloud.
anyway, just my 2¢.
Try Simplex on Yunohost. I mean, it’s about as clean/quick as can be iirc. Simplex has the lead in security, but I recall the app stating they couldn’t keep servers funded and are shutting down. So you might need to run your own to be on the safe side.
Signal had privacy problems?? Maybe using Google play notifications? I download the apk to be Google free, works on my lineage OS just fine without micro g.
XMPP, if you’re all within the same ecosystem vs SMS or RCS chat (which only carriers services support), it’ll use OMEMO encryption and is e2e encryption. I host my own instance to have a little extra control. And that’s on top of everything else secure about it. Anyway, I believe you can enable traffic over Tor for XMPP, but I do not have that bc it breaks voice calls.
I’m not a fan of having my personal identity tied to it. last I checked signal still requires a phone number.
looks like I might have been wrong originally, but it looks like signal actually does fwd secrecy as well as post-quantum encryption.
keep in mind I’m replacing telegram. I have put off moving for some years but I have the itch to replace it now. simplex also has the closest feature-pairity to telegram out of all the messengers on that list.
also I’m building and hosting this for very nontechnical users. if they heard tor they’d think it was the “darknet”.
my goal is
My family and friends all use matrix to communicate and works fine for everyone.
Matrix works well for me.
It’s not out yet, but I’d keep an eye on Flatline. It’s by the people who make Molly (Signal client fork—it’s pretty good, been using it for years). Flatline is a Molly-compatible server implementation, i.e. so that you can host your own Signal server. Because generally if someone asked for a “reliable messenger for family use” I’d recommend Signal as a polished and reliable option, though not self-hostable unfortunately.
Just a fair warning: Element (Matrix client) also had issues with notifications not appearing in time, or attachments/images not loading. (This is on a self-hosted Synapse with a handful of people and 1 bridge).
I haven’t kept up much with new developments, but last I remember, hosting the official Element Server Suite Community requires Kubernetes. Third-party servers or some install scripts are an option though.
I’ve had good notifications maybe 2,5 years ago? I don’t remember for how long. Nowadays the notifications are very unreliable (selfhosted, ntfy, any android app).
I’m not sure what the problem with the android version of Element X might be, it works perfectly for me and my wife. Voice and vid work fine, but that’s also using the matrix.org server. YMMV with your own self-hosted server, I have one for my agents but I haven’t used voice/vid with it.
And yah, I had high hopes for NC Talk, but it’s not worth the trouble even if you provision a STUN/TURN server.
SimpleX is pretty good if you’re looking for a signal/sms replacement rather than something slack-like
I’ve used XMPP for this before, using ejabberd as the server and Conversations/Monal as the client, it worked pretty well, altho ejabberd can be a bit of a handful to get running initially.
Make sure the app is set to “unrestricted” under battery settings. Most phones get really aggressive nuking down stuff that is not from FAANG
I’m using matrix for years with my wife and my mom, never really had issues, but maybe my requirements are not that high.
Buddy is selfhostig Matrix via Element server suite community edition and using element X on android as well as the normal element app on desktop. Never missed a notification, never
I’ve been using Synapse with Element X (earlier Element) for years. I remember, notifications were a problem some time ago, but it got a lot better. I also have ntfy as notification backend.
With Element X there are finally video conferences possible.
I have seen some bad reactions to Matrix from people, like them harassing others or focusing mainly on their paid customers.
Matrix is what I believe most in currently, but Fluxer might also be a good alternative in the future.
I am using conduit as a matrix server and fluffy chat as my main app. I think that most people could be happy with that :)
I have never understood why there is no protocol that allows for multi-master node setup(if a message is written to one, then queue to write to the second one and ignore timestamp missmatchning and conflict resolution(It does not have to be perfect) - matrix put too much effort into this IMO).
For family i use Signal. My coworkers use IRC and I have it setup in link-mode for multi master support(but IRC does not have new features like send image, thread, reactions, emoji, text-styling, audio/video calls). Using unrealircd. Neat when the local city network is up but the fiber connection from the city network to the internet is down so I can still write to some friends, or dont care about uptime on my server since they fallback to the second, free, Oracle VM.
Delta chat seems pretty good, you can easily self host and it’s very lightweight.
I do not recommend matrix, the apps aren’t great, and hosting is a lot to deal with.
I self hosted matrix for probably a year after me and some people started getting spam on telegram. It was the first thing I really self hosted beyond jellyfin (and plex before that) so I didn’t really fully understand what was I doing and that could have affected things.
I had a few hurdles that made it not work out for me and my friends/family. First, the end to end encryption, one of the main “selling” points I feel, makes it complicated to sign in for people who don’t care about any of that. You end up getting a code to save, I had to verify them at first, we’d have times where something still showed unverified, etc.
Just started hosting nextcloud recently and I’m also seeing the notification issue, but at least you just sign up and start using it.
I also noticed in matrix we never got notifications for emoji reactions (which we all use with each other). Other notifications were relatively solid though.
I never got webrtc and some stuff working and I sort of lost steam trying, so we could use element or fluffychat but not element X and we couldn’t have big group calls or anything like that. That’s probably on me though, but in fairness nextcloud aio just has a checkbox and all that stuff works.
Since I’m the only dork in my little group interested in this stuff I abandoned matrix when nobody used it.
I’d love to run matrix but is seem/what I’m reading PITA to run.
I’m considering Zulip and Mattermost.
You have bo idea how much of a pain in the ass mattermost is. Basically corporate trying to leech off of opensource. I decided to make it the messenger in our org 3 4 years ago. But I might move away from it if it starts acting up more.
I run Mattermost successfully for a small-ish academic professional org, and tbh it’s been simple, straightforward, and really pretty good. I live in constant fear of the ever-nearing and inevitable rug-pull, though – they do seem to regard the open-source/self-hostable side as something they do on a minimum-effort basis only because they have to, so I would be hesitant to go down this road if I was starting again.
The last update was obviously vibe coded. At least all the UI was fucked up. All sizings were messed up, colors were inverted.
And don’t get me started on continuously moving pre-existing community features into “paid only”. First boards was almost deprecated, then playbooks.
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I’m still on the 10.x branch (will need to upgrade to the 11.x branch in a few weeks, after the annual conference is done), so I didn’t experience the UI fuck up, but it sounds ominous… sigh…
If you want an easier Matrix self-hosting experience https://continuwuity.org/ is a good option :3
I just think that it sounds way too hard to have a messaging app working nowadays. I mean, from a developer perspective.
I just wished PWA was better integrated with mobile OSes so notifications worked effortlessly. That way, building my own solution would be almost trivial I think.
If I went full .apk style I certainly would miss iOS(no time to waste on Apple SDK or whatever), and Google is day after day hardening the process of installing homemade .apk.
What I am aiming at is that the discussion should not be “which messaging app/service is best according to xyz criteria”, and yes “why building my solution is not trivial?”.(of course I appreciate the current discussion, I just want to expand it)
We use synapse (Matrix). Its stability is great but we have stable internet and backup power so…
In that order. I self-host both XMPP and Matrix, and I wouldn’t want to stop using matrix. Spaces, arbitrary amounts of self-chats, and so on are great. I use matrix every day.
But for chatting… It sooner or later fails you. It’s slow. Notifications break. Messages are shown as sent, but somehow do not appear in the recipient’s devices until TWO WEEKS LATER (yeah IDK, happened twice already, in different chats and directions. Best part is, I’m not even federated!). Encryption is great IF YOU KNOW SOME CRYPTOGRAPHY BASICS, and utterly confusing otherwise.
XMPP just works. Especially the calls, holy shit, I had to fight Matrix for so long to make voice and video calls work, and xmpp just… Works. Notifications are way more reliable (as in, have been absolutely perfect). I really like monocles as a chat app on Android. (The downside is: can’t decrypt old messages on new devices, and desktop clients are ugly.)
So why Signal above XMPP?
Because it’s not your fault should something ever break in a vital service. Also the encryption and privacy afforded by it a great.
I like the idea of matrix, but I wouldn’t recommend it yet. Maybe after a few more years if the ux improves.
I’m hosting a matrix/synapse server and it’s been pretty great tbh. I use this ansible project to manage installation and updates for me and it’s been fairly painless
The fun one is host an OSCAR server and use AIM.
https://veronicaexplains.net/open-oscar-server/
It’s super lightweight to host, simple to setup, and works with any open source client that used to work with AIM.