I don't use any of these suggestions, but the ones I keep hearing *about are Quik and Fossify Messages.
Edit: accidentally a word
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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I've been using the Fossify messenger for a while it is is largely fine. It does not offer proper reaction support, showing "π€£ to 'MESSAGE'" or some such, and it doesn't offer to copy authentication codes from a notification. Other than that, it works well.
and it doesn't offer to copy authentication codes from a notification.
It actually does have that now ππ
I don't want to naysay you, but I have yet to see that in practice. Is that fairly recently added or in an upcoming release that isn't on F-Droid yet? I'd love to know more!
I'm using 1.6.0 off f-droid on a rooted phone (not sure if that matters).
It works just like textra where the notification has a button to copy the code.
Well hell yeah, I just had instance to check and it does indeed offer the option!
I don't think any of them support RCS, for whatever that's worth to you.
The only place I really miss that is with a fantasy football shit-talking group chat. Otherwise, I've tried to move away from SMS/MMS/RCS. It's hard to pull people away from iMessage.
unfortunately as far as I know RCS is closed down. only Google messages on android and iMessage on iOS support it (maybe some other proprietary options, but no FOSS options).
RCS requires server-side processing, so it requires the org providing it to be large enough to be able to peer with the other orgs providing it and the telcos routing it.
And the encryption isnβt part of the core RCS soec thatβs compatible between providers.
Im not sure about the ethics of this company, which is Australian based, but I've been using Textra for probably 10 years now. It does base off the base messenger app, so messages are still put through google but I'm not sure that any apps can avoid that.
Otherwise though it's clean and customizable. Pretty basic features like blocking, group messaging, reactions all work. The thing I like best is you can compose a message and reply directly from the notification bar. I think it's something like $3 to remove ads forever, I paid forever ago and haven't had any issues transferring through phones.
Currently I am using "Connect You". It integrated both messages and contacts, which is nice. Doesn't have a dialer though, so I use Fossify Phone with the contacts function disabled for that. I find Connect You's method of showing contacts more aesthetically pleasing than Fossify's, but that's just personal preference. Lots of people also like "Quik SMS" (a continuation of "QKSMS" I think)
Fossify messages
Almost any messaging app is better, the question is what do your friends use, and can you get them to switch.
I'm a fan of XMPP because it's an established protocol you can host yourself (if you wanted) - this removes untrustworthy providers.
It really comes down to what's your goal?
You mean for SMS? Doesn't Signal handle that as well?
Edit : nope. Signal doesn't handle sms
It used to, pulling that was their biggest mistake since requiring a phone number and made me trust them a lot less
Why would Signal removing support for an insecure messaging platform make you trust them a lot less? They were pretty clear about why it was done and gave plenty of warning.
I felt their reasoning was disingenuous and that supporting sms had been a massive driver of adoption, a lot of "normal" people used it as a default messenger on the advice of the nerds in their lives without any idea what signal or sms were. Removing that support was a significant rugpull and measurably detrimental to their stated goal of private communication as a default
What they found though was that people were just using it for SMS, not realizing that this meant it was insecure. People kept choosing convenience over security. Removing that support was well messaged almost a year before it was done; thatβs the slowest rug pull Iβve ever seen.
Locking it to phone numbers? THAT was an untrustworthy move. But removing SMS meant that people could no longer pretend to be secure when they really werenβt.
I don't have a screenshot handy, but it was very clearly communicated through both colour and iconography whether or not a conversation was encrypted. For people who still couldn't tell, like my elderly relatives, removing sms support meant they went from 10% encrypted communications back to zero and forced the rest of us to expose ourselves again to stay in touch
Why? If they were already using Signal, they werenβt about to stop using it when it dropped SMS. If they werenβt using itβ¦ any encryption was window dressing anyway.
I'm not interested in arguing and have already shared my experience, hope you have a nice rest of your day. From their perspective, "texting" most people just quit working and someone had to "fix" it by switching them back to their phone's default sms client. It's pretty clear you haven't been tech support for an elder, a lot of people aren't aware of these things or making real decisions about them at all. Texting at all is a big ask, they need help looking at/sending pictures, a separate app is way too much friction
fwiw exactly my experience. Only 2 other people in my family still use Signal after that, down from ~8.
Yeah, biggest product feature for me, and when they dropped it I dropped them.
Why can't we habe nice things? It's all going to shit. Either because of greedy corpos, or because of bad people (sometimes one is caused by the other).
Deku SMS (on fdroid) is nice to use and all, but I'm not really sure how "ethical and pro-privacy" can apply to an sms client
I use Quik, idk if it's the best or the worse, but it works well enough to receive login tokens which is what I use SMS for.
I use QkSms, even though it's old and not being maintained, it's still better than google crap. I tried flossify messages too but liked Qksms over it.
YAATA is very good, sadly its abandoned and not FOSS. I've never seen any network request from it tho I block it these days. This is the most lightweight one I tried, much better than Textra/Chomp/etc.
QKSMS is foss and I saw some suggestions for it, but it was way too complex for my use.