No need bud no need for additional app, no need for unencrypted backup files exposed on filesystem public storage, just use Delta Chat bud, just use Delta Chat

Go to your “Saved Messages” chat there you can save notes or use mini-apps in private, click the paperclip attachment button select the apps button you will see the mini-apps list, some useful apps are the to-do list app to track things you need to do or shopping lists, and the one called TOTP is the one I was talking about for 2FA PINs, the Time tracking app is also useful

FairMail is for classic unsecure email, DeltaChat is for secure end-to-end encrypted chatting

I used it for a while, it is quite good, but I recently switched to a webxdc (in-chat mini-app) in Delta Chat which allows me to access the codes from any device where I have Delta Chat installed and adding a new token in one device synchronizes to all other devices this also mean that my tokens are safe if one of my devices die and I will not lose them. All of this is without depending on a server holding your data

Delta Chat no where to be found there 🤔

Love it how “enshitification” is becoming a common word

I love how the alternative to American chatting apps is yet another centralized American chatting app running on a plethora of American services from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Cloudflare etc. And based on phone numbers where they can easily cut down comms for Europeans at any given time the US gives the orders

🤡🤡🤡

Even Gmail allows to use the email client of your choice, going for an email provider that force you to use their app is a bummer

In iOS you can use Delta Chat (https://delta.chat/) ArcaneChat is a Delta Chat client

it is pointless to talk in theory without actually trying things out, besides the app doesn’t have to do only email, in fact it already has p2p support for real-time that can be used for now inside the https://webxdc.org/ mini-apps, and might be used for calls in the future, or just use WebRTC for calls, one of the mini-apps in the store “Live Chat” already has typing indicators btw. The app already has Jitsi Meet invitations integration.

Chatting in Delta Chat with chatmail feels just as fast as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. sometimes even faster depending on the chatmail server you use

Delta chat is basically email.

and how is that exactly a problem? the protocol is email, but email done right is actually good and fast, as it can be tested if you actually try out the app. The new chatmail servers are optimized for chatting, the main reason classic email providers suck is because they have to deal with spam and arbitrary decisions like gray-listing etc

1. if they leaked something you wouldn’t know because US government law doesn’t allow them to disclose if they requested data.
2. uses AWS servers that also the gov could ask for access to Amazon directly without even talking to Signal, being centralized and depending on AWS infra is also a weakness.
3. needing phone numbers to register, often tied to passport and it is super easy to get your whole network when compromising 1 device
4. all centralized services start nice, attracting users, once they have you, and money starts being a problem… meet: enshitification

Or the classic “guys I am leaving WhatsApp, moved my whole family to Signal, another centralized US-based silo that requires phone numbers and runs on AWS, CloudFlare, etc.”

the app is much more on the WhatsApp and Telegram level UI wise, much more user friendly for “normies” like family and friends, while Matrix and XMPP are more “nerdy” and hard to understand and onboard

Nice multi-device (that actually works without encryption problems) and multi-account support.

Security-wise it is easy to end up sending unencrypted messages in XMPP (groups are often unencrypted due unusable otherwise) and in matrix it is also a mess with “unable to decrypt” and the reactions are not encrypted. ArcaneChat groups and 1:1 chats have a concept of “protected chats” via scanning QR or invite links that are warrantied to be e2e encrypted and safe against MITM attacks.

Groups in XMPP depend on the server, if the server dies the group is lost, in Matrix the groups metadata is spread across several servers, in ArcaneChat the servers are agnostic of the group state, the group lives in the users’s devices and hence don’t depend on any server, user can even migrate account/address and keep participating in the group

The server requirements for ArcaneChat are super lightweight (ex. https://arcanechat.me/ has +700 users right now and it is only using ~500MB of RAM and ~3GB of disk) in this regard XMPP might also be similarly lightweight but Matrix is well know for the complexity and requirements on the server

ArcaneChat is offline-first, you can fully use the app while being offline, even create groups, search across all your groups, messages and contacts, play in-chat mini-games or use collaborative tools like in-chat WYSIWYG editors etc. send messages etc. and all will be nicely synchronized when you go back online.

ArcaneChat is super lightweight, apk size in google play is only 13-15MB while being feature rich and beautiful

creating bots to provide extra functionality (similar to telegram bots) is easy and there are already several bots available and discoverable in the app.

Now lets talk about some downsides:

ArcaneChat doesn’t support integrated phone calls at the moment (but it is planned, and it has jitsi meet videocall invitation integration)

ArcaneChat doesn’t support discoverable public groups or channels (it is an app for private chats, you can invite people to group via invite links tho, and telegram-like channels are in the roadmap) a public bot can be used to list and join “public” groups tho, but at the moment everyone in the group is admin, there is no group admin concept as groups are private

there are more stuff to say but this post is too long already 😅