Android users can now use iMessage, with new app from Pebble founder

Among all the cross-platform chat applications that exist today, one stands out as the most sought after, yet most exclusive messaging service - iMessage. Apple’s excellent encrypted messenger service has long remained one of the most reliable messaging apps - for those who owned iPhones. But that’s about to change, with a new service that promises to bring iMessage to Android devices.

Eric Migicovsky, the creator of the extremely popular Pebble smartwatch has announced that his new app ‘Beeper’, will bring together several chat services under one app. The real draw here is that this unified messenger will reportedly run on multiple devices and support a wide range of platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because many attempts have been made to bring chat services together under one app. There’s Trillian, the all-in-one chat service from the last decade, there’s also Franz, a more modern solution that is cross-platform just like Beeper. Similarly, we’ve seen chat apps bringing iMessage to non-Apple devices going back as far as 2016, with PieMessage, and the more recent (and open-source) AirMessage, that also supports Android 11 features like chat bubbles and signing in with Google.

Also read: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, FB Messenger, iMessage: Here’s exactly what data each messaging app collects

However, while getting services like WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Discord, Hangouts, Slack, were not much of a challenge, the app’s website says that you either need to use a jailbroken iPhone with Beeper on it, or have a Mac that is always connected to the internet which will then serve as a “bridge” for your messages to be relayed between Beeper apps on it and your other devices. The Beeper service itself will cost $10 a month.