element-hq
combining Element with SMS and XMPP
Hello all, thanks for developing the great Element app. This is a post to ask 2 questions, I hope you'll indulge me. The questions are:
- To your knowledge, has it ever been tried to combine an app like Element, for communicating via the Matrix protocol, with an SMS app, in the same way that Signal offers its users the possibility of combining Signal messages with SMS messages?
- To your knowledge, has it ever been tried to combine an app like Element, for communicating via the Matrix protocol, with the ability to communicate via the XMPP protocol?
sounds like what you're looking for is "bridges" which communicate with the server... So rather than having a client for different protocols the bridges all speak to the matrix server so you can communicate using whichever matrix client you want... (both, SMS and xmpp bridges already exist)
hi @violoncelloCH thanks for the input, i appreciate it. I am not looking for bridges however, i am looking for an application that communicates separately with the relevant servers (SMS, Matrix, XMPP, etc), and so combines multiple logins in 1 app
I think XMPP is a bit much to ask for, since Element is not meant to be a general-purpose communication client, but the SMS messaging is a feature in a lot of apps offer (FB Messenger, Signal to name a few), so I see why it could be included. It will definitely be low-priority however.
I would be interested in this feature, as well.
I see two big positives of incorporating SMS directly into the app (as opposed to bridging). First, we could set Element as the default messaging app on an Android device which would allow Element to serve as the primary messaging app. Second, it would make it more appealing for some users to adopt Element as a viable messaging alternative.
I realize this feature may be lower priority, but I do hope it is added at some point.
SMS and MMS are easily accessible via OS APIs. Facebook Messenger once implemented support, as did others. However, I believe that XMPP support should be separate, since the libraries for it are less mature, and would be more involved than the OS's.
It's a good time to consider this feature now that Signal are going to be removing it from their app:
https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
RCS has meant that texting has become appreciably more popular than it was a few years ago, especially with people falling out of love with Meta's offerings for various reasons. Would love to just turn Element into my go-to default SMS app.
I've been using an SMS bridge for a year now, and whilst it absolutely does work, needing to accept invites to conversations and not being able to delete SMS/SMS rooms (can only "leave" them and they stay in my Android SMS app) is annoying.
The other quirk to bridges is that if your homeserver is down or you have cellular access but no internet connectivity or general bandwidth/"data" left then you obviously won't get SMS notifications via your bridge as it isn't working. This is assuming that everybody disables their default SMS app's notifications to avoid very annoying doubling up on notifications per SMS.
There's a ton of potential here and would love to see it fleshed out a little more.
In lieu of Matrix being P2P, being able to fall back to SMS/RCS with a contact in the same conversation's view is an interesting idea. But I guess that would mean some method of unifying chats with a specific contact ala Windows Phone's unified messaging, or Windows 10's MyPeople, which was a little more crude, but still meant reducing a lot of clutter on multiple 'rooms' with a contact.
In lieu of Matrix being P2P, being able to fall back to SMS/RCS with a contact in the same conversation's view is an interesting idea.
@HammyHavoc, ≤ FossifyOrg/Messages/discussions/34#discussioncomment-13255787 demonstrates that RCS support may be infeasible for some time.