Privacy

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Self-Hosted Beeper Alternative (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 days ago by bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm currently using Beeper to conglomerate the plethora of chat services that my friends and family use: WhatsApp, FB Messenger, RCS/SMS, and Discord. I use Signal separately because I read that Beeper needs to decrypt incoming messages before reencrypting and routing, so I felt adding a bridge for Signal defeated the purpose of using Signal.

I've also read that Beeper is essentially just Matrix with a bunch of bridges, so I looked into self-hosting Matrix and standing up those bridges myself. I would feel comfortable integrating Signal into a self-hosted instance where I control and can encrypt the middleware.

What would you all recommend as a viable, self-hosted alternative to replace Beeper? I've been trying to set up Matrix but running into a lot of headache with no simple way to self-host it. Yes, I've tried the Ansible set up and I get countless issues. I've heard an XMPP server might be a better solution as it is more lightweight and battle-tested? How do XMPP gateways compare to Matrix bridges, and would they cover all my needs?

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[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I'm using the Beeper Matrix server, but self-host their bridges. That way the de- and reencryption is done on my server, and Beeper only sees encrypted Matrix messages. It's extremely easy to set up if you've used docker before, much less work than running a full Matrix server yourself.

[–] bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This might be exactly what I'm looking for, thank you! I'm fine with Beeper itself, I just want the decryption on a machine I control so this looks perfect if I can get it working. Thanks!

[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

if I can get it working

It's really as simple as starting one container per chat service, with a config like this:

services:
    beeper-<service>:
        image: ghcr.io/beeper/bridge-manager
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
            - MATRIX_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your beeper matrix token>
            - BRIDGE_NAME=sh-<service>
        volumes:
            - ./beeper-<service>:/data

then messaging the @sh-<service>bot:beeper.local bot user, and logging in to your chat account.

[–] bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Can confirm, I just got this all working. Thank you!