Show HN: Amber – better Beeper, a modern all-in-one messenger

"better Beeper"

This is a different Beeper. I don't want a personal CRM, I know everyone in my Beeper chats well enough that I don't need a sidebar to prompt me about where they live. Conversely, I need Signal and Facebook Messenger because that's where my loved ones are.

However I can absolutely see that some people would want this. CRM for email is a solved problem and many professionals use CRM tools, but it doesn't exist in the same way for chat, and maybe it should (although email feels like the bigger market). This is probably in desperate need for a LinkedIn connection though.

My advice to the Amber team: is this for work or personal use? Pick one, make it great for that, and don't try to force it to be the other.

These tools always fall short, not because the teams making them are bad, but because the underlying chat tools they build on are adversarial to the idea of a third-party UI replacing their UI. A new entrant might escape their ire for a while, of course.

Cool, I like to see more innovation in this space.

You obviously have different needs than what Beeper provides, but claiming it's better when you only support a fraction of the networks is a bit steep imo.

Curious what other networks you plan to support and what are your monetization plans?

I really like the addition of folders and CRM features compared to Beeper.

The networks I'm interested in are Telegram (you already got that), Signal, Instagram, Matrix, Threema, Slack and Teams (in that order).

Not what I want to see from the homepage for an app that wants to read all of my messages.

> Secure Connection Failed

> An error occurred during a connection to useamber.app. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

Three random services only, and "AI" for some reasons...

Pidgin at least supports service plugins and many more protocols, and doesn't have AI, which is a big plus when we're talking about private messaging.

This is super cool, but unfortunately has to be open source and with signed reproducible builds.

You write all messages multiple times, them clarify it's only 3 services. Stop that. If it doesn't support everything mainstream, don't claim "all".

I think beeper does have folders right?

Also the fact is that I don't need AI included into this software.

Its nice that it never touches your server but beeper is also moving forward in that direction and beeper is also open source and uses the matrix protocol so you can actually be free to use any matrix clients.

What about yours? As someone who uses beeper for talking with insta chats with my friends, I have no regrets picking beeper.

You need screenshots on the front page. Put one front and center next to your hero text so it's right there above the fold.

> All messages are end-to-end encrypted and go straight from your device to the network of choice – never touching our servers.

Just because the messages themselves aren't proxied doesn't mean a service can't steal the content on the end device. I'm obviously not saying you _are_ doing that, but the trust issue is my biggest issue here.

as much as i want something like this to exist... fool me once, shame on thee; fool me twice, shame on me

with that being said, good luck!

Are there any open source clients for this out there? Also, if someone were to build that, what are the protocols one would even use to get these things talking to each other and reconciling the different accounts quirks

i have never seen a messenger app made by anyone that was capable of migrating all the existing users and their chats from another platform instantly. the day someone makes this, its gonna get traction by a mile compared to anything else out there. imagine clicking "import from messenger" and boom all users and chats from messenger added and clicking "import from whatsapp", "import from wechat" you get the idea

Before I would even consider something like this:

* Where's your privacy policy?

* What/how are you handling the different customer protection laws? What juristictions are you working in? Where's the data hosted?

* Where's the design description?

* What encryption are you actually using? If you rolled your own, then well.. good luck.

* How could you ensure end-to-end encryption over multiple protocols, without either completely reverse engineering said protocols? If your answer here would be that you're using a central server where messages get passed between services (and thus decrypted), it isn't end-to-end.

The site is also very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't. There are so many questions, and zero answers.

I've been using BlueBubbles because the only thing I needed Beeper for is to get iMessage working on windows and linux.

Google only login :(.

Light mode and Apple font please

Cool product! I'd love to see a more refined personal CRM. Right now, it's a hit and miss with contacts on Apple.

I'm most interested in the CRM. I'm a Linux and Android user, so there's currently nothing for me to try, but a page dedicated to the CRM features might get my email address on your mailing list.

Good luck!

Is your AI implementation on device only or is it making use of a 3rd party service (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google etc.)?

Does this support every feature of the messengers you support?

if you can make the UI/UX of this better than messages, whatsapps, etc combined, then I'd be willing to pay money for it.

How are you supporting iMessage? What method?

Niceeee

Would love you to add Signal, as well as DMs in Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn.

Mac only.

Looks neat, I'm a little concerned about your iMessage support, is this even allowed by Apple? You might find some resistance on that front.

>Personal CRM

Interesting to hear I'm not the only one who's found the need to write something like this.

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