@Display Name@lemmy.ml is right, confirmed via their official FAQs: https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-does-beeper-connect-to-encrypted-chat-networks-like-imessage-signal-whatsapp
When sending and receiving Signal, iMessage and WhatsApp messages, Beeper’s web service acts as a relay. For example, if you send a message from Beeper to a friend on WhatsApp, the message is encrypted on your Beeper client, sent to the Beeper web service, which decrypts and re-encrypts the message with WhatsApp’s proprietary encryption protocol.
I don’t know how tech savy you are but I selfhost Matrix and almost exclusively use bridges to talk with friends. I feel comfortable breaking e2e on a system I control and the all-in-one-place messaging is pretty sweet, like Pidgin used to be.
If you are already comfortable self-hosting other services, Matrix doesn’t really impose any additional complexity IMO and the bridges I use seem to be very stable.
So can I use this to join my family’s group chat because they all have iphones and refuse to use anything but Imessage…
Yes, but they’ll have to add you to the group chat using your Apple ID instead of your primary phone number unless you use one of the “workarounds” to get your number attached to iMessage.
https://airmessage.org/help/guide/phone-number
The workarounds listed are for Airmessage but they apply to Beeper as well in terms of getting your phone number attached. I’ve been using method #1 successfully for about a month now.
The way they got iMessage to work is by hiring a Foss developer who did something pretty amazing:
They reverse engineered the iMessage protocol and emulated parts of macOS that are necessary when registering an iMessage account on a device!!
Man, I have been loving Beeper so far.
No need for an always on Mac with Beeper. I was previously using Airmessage and then Bluebubbles in this manner on an old Mac Mini. Have been on Beeper for a couple of months now. They use their own Macs as servers.
Alas, until they open it up more, it’s kinda useless for anyone that isn’t already using it
How do you mean? I’m actually kinda interested since I have friends on WhatsApp and Signal. Seems like it would make things more convenient by combining both messengers.
Is there a downside I’m missing?
Edit: they break E2E encryption for forwarding, so no dice :( https://www.beeper.com/faq#how-does-beeper-connect-to-encrypted-chat-networks-like-imessage-signal-whatsapp
No, it’s very useful. They open-sourced the bridge, so you can easily add it to your own Matrix server: https://github.com/mautrix/gmessages/tree/main
