To be honest, I think the above clients and services like Snikket fit that description.

Now, I wouldn’t say they’re all on the same level UX-wise as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. But I do think they are 90%-95% of the way there, and in my experience that’s enough to convince friends and family to switch over.

In my experience, when people haven’t wanted to switch, it’s normally not been because of the clients, but because they don’t want to install yet another app to talk to someone.

Any new open source software is always a net positive.

But, there are a few small caveats to the way they’ve done it (depending on how cynical/cautious you are):

• Because Proton are not accepting contributions, they own all the copyright, so can make the code closed source again if they want to (that wouldn’t affect the already released versions, but future versions)
• They could likely take down any derivative on iOS, since Apple will always take instruction from the copyright holder, for GPL’d code
• Since the builds are not reproducible, there’s no guarantee that the binaries they distribute are built from the source code

How do you define modern? I would call these modern clients personally:

• Android: Conversations
• iOS / MacOS: Monal
• Linux: Dino
• Windows: Gajim

Perfect, now you just have to wrap your program inside a debugger in production!

I’d like to second Snikket - it’s designed for this use case and is very simple to set up.

If you’d rather not use Snikket, check out these recommendations for clients and servers.

Hope it works for you! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Different strokes for different folks! I’ve been fortunate enough that many of my family and friends have been happy enough to follow me.

But I don’t disagree with you, Signal has a much more recognisable brand and better user experience. These are things that we need to improve if we’re going to get anywhere near the level of adoption Signal has.

How I Got a Truly Anonymous XMPP Account:

• Open my client (e.g. Conversations, Monal, Dino)
• Pick a random server, username and password
• Click register

Sorry, it’s a cheap joke, but it still baffles me that Signal requires a phone number, so I felt I had to post it :)

Of course, this is not XMPP-specific either, just my protocol of choice, there are many other open alternatives that also offer such functionality.

I originally suggested Monal to my friend (who is quite into iOS and really appreciates a well designed application) and she found the same, but then she tried Siskin, and was happy enough to use it to this day.

Just for reference, here are my favourites on each platform.

Each support modern XMPP extensions, interoperate very nicely with each other, and (at least in my opinion) look good!

• Android: Conversations
• iOS: Siskin
• Windows & Linux: Dino
• Mac OS: Beagle IM
• Web: Converse JS

As a note of caution, I used Oracle’s free tier to run a personal Matrix server, and it got deleted without any advance warning after a few months. I migrated to another provider and haven’t had any issues for 2+ years now.

I’ve had good fortune converting some family and friends to use XMPP.

People always mention fragmentation, and while there is some truth to it, it can be massively minimised by choosing blessed clients and servers for them to use.

In my case, I run my own server, and thoroughly test the clients (especially the onboarding flow) that I expect them to use, so that any question they have, I can help them out with quickly. Since we’re all on identically configured servers, it minimises one whole class of incompatibilities.

There is still unfortunately a bit of a usability gap compared to Signal - particularly on the iOS clients. But they have come a long way and are consistently improving.