I’m currently using Beeper to conglomerate the plethora of chat services that my friends and family use: WhatsApp, FB Messenger, RCS/SMS, and Discord. I use Signal separately because I read that Beeper needs to decrypt incoming messages before reencrypting and routing, so I felt adding a bridge for Signal defeated the purpose of using Signal.

I’ve also read that Beeper is essentially just Matrix with a bunch of bridges, so I looked into self-hosting Matrix and standing up those bridges myself. I would feel comfortable integrating Signal into a self-hosted instance where I control and can encrypt the middleware.

What would you all recommend as a viable, self-hosted alternative to replace Beeper? I’ve been trying to set up Matrix but running into a lot of headache with no simple way to self-host it. Yes, I’ve tried the Ansible set up and I get countless issues. I’ve heard an XMPP server might be a better solution as it is more lightweight and battle-tested? How do XMPP gateways compare to Matrix bridges, and would they cover all my needs?

  • shrugal@lemm.ee
    8·
    6 days ago

    I’m using the Beeper Matrix server, but self-host their bridges. That way the de- and reencryption is done on my server, and Beeper only sees encrypted Matrix messages. It’s extremely easy to set up if you’ve used docker before, much less work than running a full Matrix server yourself.

    • bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      This might be exactly what I’m looking for, thank you! I’m fine with Beeper itself, I just want the decryption on a machine I control so this looks perfect if I can get it working. Thanks!

      • shrugal@lemm.ee
        2·
        4 days ago

        if I can get it working

        It’s really as simple as starting one container per chat service, with a config like this:

        services:
    beeper-<service>:
        image: ghcr.io/beeper/bridge-manager
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
            - MATRIX_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your beeper matrix token>
            - BRIDGE_NAME=sh-<service>
        volumes:
            - ./beeper-<service>:/data

        then messaging the @sh-<service>bot:beeper.local bot user, and logging in to your chat account.