It's perfect for when you're too busy to talk and too lazy to type. Talk to individuals or create a group chat with up to 250 participants, where you can share instant voice and video messages without having to make a call. It wouldn't be my first choice of app to use personally, but it does the job it sets out to do. It's a touch more chaotic than WhatsApp, but it offers the same core messaging features. Viber is another solid all-around messaging app, with millions of users across the globe. They could turn around and ruin it in the next few years, but at least to me, the outlook is still pretty sunny. Both features are basically lifted straight from Telegram and Viber, where they're incredibly popular, but I won't say no to a good thing.Īnother major change is that WhatsApp now lets you sign in on multiple smartphones, though one of them will have to be on if you want to use the desktop apps for Windows and Mac, and the web app at .Īll in all, WhatsApp continues to tick pretty much every box. In particular, Communities allows organizations like HOAs and clubs to manage multiple groups in one place, and the recently-announced Channels allows for one-to-many broadcasts. Meta has also aggressively rolled out new features over the past year or two that could potentially change how WhatsApp is used. Encrypted messages are even removed from WhatsApp's servers once they're delivered. Everything you send, including file transfers, is fully encrypted. Despite being the most popular messaging service in the world and being owned by Facebook parent company Meta, WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption enabled for all conversations. You can chat one-to-one or in groups with up to 512 participants. The app is a fully-featured messaging client that supports text chats, as well as photos, short videos, voice messaging, and audio and video calls. As of 2023, it has around two billion users, and it's easy to see why: it's a shockingly decent service. Since then, the service has grown both its feature set and user base. Launched in 2009 as a way to send messages over a data connection rather than SMS, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014. WhatsApp is the undisputed ruler of free mobile messaging in much of the world. To be honest, this requirement didn't exclude many apps as it's a very common feature, but I still felt it needed to be stated. For a free chat app to make this list, it had to be able to support group messaging. A lot of text messaging doesn't happen one-to-one. If you want to send something over text message, you should be able to-at least as long as it's digital. They can be long essays, but also photos, GIFs, voice notes, YouTube links, documents, and lots of other forms of multimedia. Text messages are no longer 140 characters long (at least if you're not using SMS). Support for pictures, video, and other multimedia. It also helps that it's easier to convince your friends to sign up for a new service if they don't have to pay. Part of this is because most people aren't prepared to pay for them, but it's also because large corporations actually make surprisingly decent apps sometimes. There are a handful of circumstances where end-to-end encryption isn't appropriate, like with public group messaging and some kinds of business communications but across the board, I favored services that cared about your security and privacy. The best chat apps all have end-to-end encryption enabled by default, or at a stretch, they allow you to quickly turn it on. Do you know who can read your SMS messages? Pretty much everyone. Text messaging should be about the person, not the device they use. We don't want any green bubble/blue bubble drama here. If, however, you're starting a friend group, desert island colony, or fan club from scratch and you get to pick the tools you use, this is what you should be looking for in messaging apps:Īvailability on both iPhone and Android. (The only app I'm sorry isn't included is Discord, but it's just not a texting app.) The big reason to use any of those apps is that your friends do. Twitter, despite badly adding end-to-end encryption to its direct messages, isn't here either. Nor did whatever Google is calling its latest messaging foray. IMessage, SMS, and Android Messages didn't make this list. So when it came to putting together this list, that freed me up to be pretty strict about the requirements for inclusion. If that's SMS or smoke signals, you have my full permission to use it-as long as you aren't talking about anything super sensitive. Especially after testing all the texting apps out there, I believe the best texting app is normally the one people will actually reply to you with.
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