We followed the development of Beeper’s iMessage integration closely throughout 2023 because it represented the best chance we’d ever had of getting blue bubbles on Android — at least, it gave us more reason to hope thanNothing’s failed Sunbird solution. But things quickly spiraled out of control when the company went public with Beeper Mini, a spinoff of the multi-platform messenger that broughtiMessageto any Android user willing to pony up $2 a month. The saga went on for weeks throughout December, only to fizzle out after a game of cat and mouse between Beeper and Apple’s developers ended with the former falling back on its pre-Mini method of forwarding messages through an iPhone or Mac. So it was clearly trending in this direction, but now, Beeper Mini is formally dead.
Beeper Mini mini-timeline
If you haven’t been following as closely as we have, let’s get you caught up. It was quite the roller coaster, and spoiler alert, it doesn’t end well for Beeper Mini.
January 2024: The end of the line
Beeper Mini was essentially an offshoot of the Beeper Cloud app, which, as the name suggests, is a cloud-based utility that brings together all of your messaging accounts under one roof, from WhatsApp to Telegram, Signal, and even Facebook Messenger. What separated Mini was that its operations ran locally, and it connected directly to Apple’s servers to enable iMessage on Android. However, after that little game of cat and mouse, Beeper has been forced to use a cloud-based solution for this task where messages are sent through either an iPhone or a Mac after they leave the Android device.
This means Beeper can no longer register your phone number with iMessage, instead requiring you to contact people through the email address used with your Apple ID. This also means that Beeper Mini has become redundant, as Beeper Cloud could already accomplish this. So in a message sent out to Beeper Cloud users this week, the company announced that it is consolidating its wares and removing Beeper Mini from the Play Store (via9to5Google):
We have moved iMessage to ‘Labs’ in Beeper Cloud and removed Beeper Mini from the Play Store
The company’s CEO, Eric Migicovsky, then shared an update about Beeper’s roadmap. Now that there’s no longer a need for separate branding of Mini and Cloud, the company is working on an all-encompassing app with a simplified name: Beeper. For now, iMessage on Android functionality can be found in the Labs section of the Beeper Cloud app.
Our #1 priority right now is the Beeper Android app. As we explained in ourProduct Roadmappost, our beautiful and fast Beeper Mini app is now the foundation of the brand new Beeper Android app. We’re currently in the process of adding all 14 other chat networks in. It’s a completely new app, with a new design, built for top speed and performance. Android friends – get excited 🙂
We’re also working on a big performance boost for Beeper Desktop, improvements to the Linkedin, Instagram, and Google Messages bridges, among many other things!
So it appears the idea of phone number-based iMessages on Android is dead and buried, but at least Beeper will live on in some form, and its cloud-based iMessage solution is still a handy tool to have in the Android user’s arsenal. But this could all be moot later this year when Apple debuts RCS on iMessage, whichstands to be a major boon for Android and iOS alike.
