Beeper Mini, The app that brings blue-bubble iMessage texts to Android users is back up and running on Monday after a long weekend that saw Apple end Beeper’s services, claiming it was a security risk. Now, the startup behind the new app says it’s back up and running, but hasn’t revealed how that was possible. Additionally, Beeper Mini will be free for now, given the volatile nature of Beeper’s status and Apple’s efforts to end it.
Founded by former Pebble smartwatch founder, Eric Migikowski, Beeper was initially working on an app that brings together all of a user’s chat apps into a single interface. However, after discovering new technology that allowed her to reverse engineer the iMessage protocol, she set out to create a new app called Beeper Mini that was solely focused on providing Android users with iMessage conversations for $1.99 per month. This included support for high-quality photos and videos, tap reactions, typing cues, read receipts, and more.
The app quickly climbed into the top 20 of the Play Store charts and saw over 100,000 downloads in the first 48 hours, the company claims.
Unfortunately, the Beeper Mini’s success was short-lived. Only days after launch, Apple on Friday night took action against the startup, having found a way to stop Beeper Mini’s messages from Android phones being transmitted to its servers. The Cupertino tech giant explained that it had to shut down the app because it “posed significant risks to users’ security and privacy, including the potential to expose metadata and enable spam, spam and phishing attacks.” Essentially, Apple said it could not verify that Beeper’s claims of end-to-end encryption were true, and therefore needed to take “steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to gain access to iMessage. “
As the Beeper team scrambled to find a fix, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) shamed Apple for its intervention in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying “Green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app that allows Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big Tech executives protect profits by suppressing competitors. Chatting between different platforms should be easy and secure,” he wrote.
On Monday, Beeper announced on its blog that it has updated the Beeper Mini app to fix the issue that “caused messages not to be sent or received”. He hasn’t said exactly how this was done, but he notes that the Beeper Mini’s security remains unchanged — promising that it still includes local, end-to-end encryption as previously described. Migicovsky told TechCrunch that he can’t share anything on the matter beyond what’s already in the blog post.
Although the Beeper Mini is working again, there’s a caveat: phone number registration still doesn’t work. This means users will need to sign in with an Apple ID. The startup says it’s working to address that, too.
He’s also decided to make Beeper Mini free for now, given how “chaotic” things have been over the past few days. “Once things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at enabling subscriptions again,” the blog post reads.
Even though Beeper didn’t have its app tested by an independent third-party security company before launch, it’s a challenge for Apple to test it.
“If Apple doubts the security and privacy of our app, we are willing to share the entire Beeper Mini codebase with a mutually agreed third-party security research company,” the blog post said. Asked if they would conduct an audit without Apple’s involvement, Migicovsky tells us he wants Apple to agree on the company first. The company also said it would be willing to add a pager emoji to the metadata of all its sent messages, which would allow the Messages app to filter messages from Beeper Mini users.
Users can get the updated version of Beeper Mini from beeper.com/update on their phone for now as the company is yet to submit the new version to the Play Store, claiming that it needs to do some final testing. But that means users are required to download the app update on their devices, which is more risky than downloading from the Play Store, where apps undergo basic security checks and checks. The app update is now live on Google Play (updated, 1:28 PM EST).
The update, which now prompts users to sign in with their Apple ID, also includes new features such as conversations that will open on the last unread message and an improved video player, the blog post noted. In testing, signing in with our Apple ID generated an Apple prompt noting that our ID was used to sign in to a device “near Los Angeles, CA” (where we’re not located.) We got a “2FA submission error” error message after updating the app but an uninstall/reinstall fixed it. We understand that this is a known bug.
Apple has yet to make direct contact with Beeper, having only released a statement to the press. It is currently unclear if, how or when he will be able to disable the updated version of Beeper.
