An engineer jailbroke iPhones to create Android app that lets you directly send messages to iMessage

Engineers from Beeper startup have developed an Android app, Beeper Mini, that allows Android users to directly send messages to iMessage on Apple servers, and it really works.

In Short

• Beeper Mini enables Android users to directly send messages to Apple's iMessage.
• The app reverse-engineers the iMessage system, turning Android's green message bubbles into iMessage's blue ones.
• Unlike other similar apps, Beeper Mini sends messages directly to iMessage, bypassing the security concerns of using a Mac hosted in the cloud.

Engineers at a startup called Beeper have reverse-engineered the Apple iMessage app and figured out how Android phones can directly send messages to Apple servers. The result: A new app called Beeper Mini, which is now available on the Google Play store for all Android users around the globe. As the startup promises, the Beeper Mini app allows Android users to chat on iMessage with iPhone users. With the blue bubbles, the interface, the features and everything.

Basically, when an Android user downloads and installs the Beeper Mini app, the app asks for permission to access all your messages to figure out which of those are from iPhone users. Once it figures that out, the green bubbles of your messages on your iPhone-using friend’s iMessage turn blue. And any messages you send in the future via the Beeper Mini app will also go as a blue bubble message to iPhone users. Besides the novelty of the blue bubble, Beeper Mini users will also be able to access iMessage features like reactions, the same threads interface, among others.

There are other apps trying to do this too. Nothing also recently announced that Nothing Chat will bring an iMessage feature for Android users. However, Nothing Chat, and many other Android apps like it, use a method that raises genuine security concerns. In fact, Nothing Chat was pulled four days after it was launched due to a serious security issue that was discovered in the app. The reason is that apps like Nothing Chat don’t send messages DIRECTLY to iMessage or Apple servers like the Beeper Mini app does. These apps send messages using a Mac that's hosted in the cloud, which can compromise on security.

The Verge spoke to the CEO of the startup Beeper who revealed how the app was created. The developers cracked the code on registering a phone number with iMessage, sending messages straight to Apple's servers, and receiving those messages back on your phone within the app. It was a tricky manoeuvre involving “jailbreaking the iPhone” and reverse-engineering Apple's iMessage app step by step. The Beeper team had to pinpoint where to direct the messages, understand the required message format, and master the retrieval process from the cloud.

You didn’t think this was for free, did you? The app costs about Rs 160 or $2 per month. Reportedly, Beeper will drop the “mini” from the name of the app soon and will add support for sending messages to WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, and other apps, directly from the one app.

The Beeper Mini app has launched on the heels of the Apple announcement that it will soon adopt the RCS messaging standard. While many confused it for Beeper Mini-like direct iMessage-ing between Android and iPhone, it will essentially only bring some iMessage features to Android, so that iPhone and Android users don’t have to use SMS and MMS to communicate any more.

Published By:
Nandini Yadav
Published On:
Dec 6, 2023