My family and I currently use Whatsapp to chat. We have group chats in there and it doesn't matter whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone, the app works and is easy to use.
I'm looking for an alternative. I want something I can self host, has encryption built in, and that has apps available for iOS and Android that are polished and similar to Whatsapp so that the family will actually take the leap and transition without too much pain or fuss.
Any suggestions?
What you are looking for may be in this list:
https://alternativeto.net/software/signal-private-messenger/?platform=self-hosted
Or from this post on Reddit:
https://Reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/jronxy https://Teddit.net/r/selfhosted/comments/jronxy <-- May be easier to read
Thank you for the links!
Text only? Or do you need text, voice and/or video?
Don’t need voice but do need picture and video attachment capability.
You can self host Matrix (e.g. it's also an Umbrel app) and there are many mobile apps for each platform. E.g. FluffyChat is a good one on Android. On Desktop I'd probably just use Element.
Matrix is what for example what @ODELL and the team are using here for Citadel Dispatch.
You can look for sphinx, developed based on lightning
https://joinmastodon.org/
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/social-network-set-mastodon-instance-linux/
Correct me if I’m wrong but mastodon is more of a social network thing (like Twitter) than a chat platform like whatsapp
Can’t self host, but Signal is an easy switch and a lot better
My problem with signal is that building from source is damn near impossible because of the mess their code is and how many dependencies it requires. You’re therefore trusting whatever they provide for download.