Details
Genre: Communication
Developer: Daniel Gultsch
Description
A free and open source Jabber/XMPP client for Android. Easy to use, reliable, battery friendly. With built-in support for images, group chats and e2e encryption.
Design principles
โข Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or privacy
โข Rely on existing, well established protocols
โข Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)
โข Require as little permissions as possible
Features
โข End-to-end encryption with either OMEMO or OpenPGP
โข Sending and receiving images
โข Intuitive UI that follows Android Design guidelines
โข Pictures / Avatars for your Contacts
โข Syncs with desktop client
โข Conferences (with support for bookmarks)
โข Address book integration
โข Multiple Accounts / unified inbox
โข Very low impact on battery life
Conversations makes it very easy to create an account on the conversations.im server. Using that server comes with an annual fee of 8 Euro after a 6 month trial period. However Conversations will work with any other XMPP server as well. A lot of XMPP servers are run by volunteers and are free of charge.
XMPP Features
Conversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called XEPโs. Conversations supports a couple of those to make the overall user experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not support these extensions. Therefore to get the most out of Conversations you should consider either switching to an
XMPP server that does or โ even better โ run your own XMPP server for you and your friends.
These XEPs are โ as of now:
โข XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams (or mod_proxy65). Will be used to transfer files if both parties are behind a firewall (NAT).
โข XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol for avatars
โข XEP-0191: Blocking command lets you blacklist spammers or block contacts without removing them from your roster.
โข XEP-0198: Stream Management allows XMPP to survive small network outages and changes of the underlying TCP connection.
โข XEP-0280: Message Carbons which automatically syncs the messages you send to your desktop client and thus allows you to switch seamlessly from your mobile client to your desktop client and back within one conversation.
โข XEP-0237: Roster Versioning mainly to save bandwidth on poor mobile connections
โข XEP-0313: Message Archive Management synchronize message history with the server. Catch up with messages that were sent while Conversations was offline.
โข XEP-0352: Client State Indication lets the server know whether or not Conversations is in the background. Allows the server to save bandwidth by withholding unimportant packages.
โข XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload allows you to share files in conferences and with offline contacts. Requires an additional component on your server.
Screenshots
Changelog
ยท minor bug fixes
ยท Set own OMEMO devices to inactive after not seeing them for 14 days. (was 7 days)