It would be nice if I could get SMS 2FA-type notifcations on my desktop without having to use my phone.
I probably wouldn’t use Signal with it, since Beeper’s own page seems to suggest that sending Signal messages with it would be less secure! And, I guess, SMS isn’t secure to begin with . . .
If I download and install Element, and then look at the SMS bridges available on Matrix’s website, the recommended bridge instructions sends me over to Beeper, since I don’t have my own server. Old and confused here . . .
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What OS are you using? Microsoft has a proprietary and data-sucking app that can allow you to send messages from desktop. I can understand wanting to avoid using it.
On Linux there’s KDE Connect and a litany of other options as well (KDE Connect breaks a lot in my personal experience, although it has been more stable lately).
Jumping to Beeper for this seems like a bunch of extra steps to mimic things that already exist.
Sorry, on Linux Mint 22.1. I’m not a big fan of KDE stuff in general, since it seems like you have to download tons of other stuff just to use one of their apps, but I suppose I could give it a look . . .
I guess that is one of the issues with reuse of frameworks and things. The first one takes a lot of new stuff. Subsequent KDE software doesn’t
I guess there are pro’s and cons to all things.
There’s also GSconnect, a gnome implementation. There’s also Zorin Connect from Zorin OS.
There is also scrcpy
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
Scrcpy literally copies the screen of your android device into a Window on your desktop
Anyway, I found those by searching “kde connect alternatives.”
This is cool! Will try tonight
I’ll take a look at those, thank you. Using one of these is preferable to going the Matrix/Element bridge route, you think? I really like the idea of Matrix, but it was a real pain to get everyone on Signal, and bridging that to Matrix/Element seems kind of complicated and quite possibly less secure (although Signal has its own issues of course) than just using Signal by itself.
Beeper has questionable ownership now, and honestly, I always found their privacy practices questionable at best.
When I was being onboarded for Beeper, when it was still in it’s infancy and they had to walk you through the technical setup via an onboarding video call, I asked what promises they could keep about privacy if the company was sold? I asked because the owner of Beeper was the guy who made the Pebble watch and he sold Pebble and I was wondering if the sale would require the privacy policy to stay the same. I never got a response, and then Migicovsky sold it, like I thought he might.
What actually made me ask the question initially was getting into a recorded onboarding session that I had never been warned would be recorded. The first warning I had that they would record the video-call onboarding session was when I logged into the session. They never thought to warn me ahead of time that my voice and onboarding would be recorded. I bowed out and never signed up for Beeper, especially since they never thought it was worth it to answer my questions about privacy practices after having already disrespected my privacy once. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth about their privacy promises if they couldn’t even bother to warn me ahead of time that an onboarding session would be recorded.
If you were running your own Matrix server and bridge, you at least know what’s happening because you’re fully in control of it. But that can be a lot of work where these options are out of the box working at least.
Erg, after all this fuss, Element is kind of hard to use and not very intuitive 🙁
Yeah as much as the other options aren’t perfect, it’s why I went with KDE connect. 😔
I am in the process of setting up my own Matrix server but it’s my first time using Ansible so who knows how that will go. Ugh.
Yeesh, doesn’t sound too good on their part. An interesting story, thanks for taking the time to write all that. I will now go ahead and cross Beeper off my list.
Wise concern. I never tried Beeper, either, despite becoming eligible from the waitlist.
