Monal - XMPP Chat 4+

Open source XMPP Messenger

Molitor und Dietzel, Inh. Thilo Molitor

    • 3.6 • 115 Ratings
    • Free

Screenshots

Description

There has never been a better time to get into XMPP, a free public chat network no one controls or owns. Monal is a fast and user friendly way to use XMPP. Just download the app, login or register and you are ready to chat in minutes. It looks and works the way other apps do, so there is no need to “learn XMPP” or even care what it is.

Notable features:
- Open Source
- No Ads! Strong focus on privacy. Does not phone home and does not have software "metrics"
- Does not read any personal information
- With a direct connection to your server, your password and all other info are never sent to a third-party
- OMEMO encrypted chat
- Will work with corporate XMPP servers that require VPN
- Multi user chat (MUC) support for group chats
- Audio/Video calls

Implements certain XMPP extensions intended to improve mobile communication:
- XEP-0357: Push Notifications
- XEP-0280: Message Carbons keep messages in synch between clients
- XEP-0198: Stream Management to quickly reconnect
- XEP-0199: XMPP Ping to maintain connections
- XEP-0313: Message Archive Management to download chat history
- XEP-0352: Client State Indication for dramatic reduction on power use
- XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload to send images in conversations

What’s New

Version 6.4.12

- Fixed handling of fromUser and toUser in muc mam queries
- Contacts from the address book can now be shared again., thanks Melvo
- Fix crashes when connectivity is unstable
- Don't play call error sounds indefinitely
- Fix bug in roster subscription handling

Ratings and Reviews

3.6 out of 5
115 Ratings

115 Ratings

Wild Ion ,

I have some questions

I'm having problems with flashing and crashing, after sending a message at one point, monal flashed and when I opened it again nothing was displayed and it also flashed immediately. After repeating it many times I had to delete and reinstall it, now it is working fine, but I would like to know why it crashes.
Overall monal is still a good XMPP client for iOS, although it still has some minor issues

Developer Response ,

Well, I can't tell you what happened in the retrospective, but if you ever experience problems again, you can always create a ticket on github: https://github.com/monal-im/Monal/issues or write an email to info@monal-im.org

zfkdnop ,

Great utility! Lots of development activity; high hopes!

It seems to me Monal has come a long way since release. Some devs just release their app and never work on it again - but not Monal! The Monal devs are reasonably active with maintenance & bugfixes. They’ve put together a very useful, feature-rich, easy-to-use XMPP client while keeping a minimalist feel.

Monal crashes occasionally, but not so much as to impede my usecase. I just close/reopen the app, or ignore the crash warning, and pick up where I left off. (To devs: I’ll have to remember to send you the crash report next time. I think I tried once and it said my phone wasn’t set up to send emails? I dunno. I’ll try.)

Overall, the app works great and has all the necessities. Works flawlessly with my cheap low-end VPS running ejabberd. Calls connect fast, voice is clear, no lag. OMEMO works; but I did have some issues with it early on where my recipient couldn’t read msgs (or vice versa) even though we had confirmed each other’s keys. To be fair this could have also been a user error. This was eventually resolved.

I would like to see additional privacy options. OMEMO is fine. I would like to see PGP implemented (for example, I believe the Linux XMPP client “Dino” has the ability to use PGP as well as OMEMO)

Perhaps even encrypted voice calls (assuming they are not already encrypted)

Developer Response ,

Thanks! Regarding GPG: That's on our roadmap, but currently we have a lot of other TODOs that are even more important, for example: https://monal-im.org/post/00013-nlnet-funding2/

Voice and video calls are already encrypted and signed with OMEMO (in OMEMO encrypted chats and if the other client supports this. At least Conversations for Android does support OMEMO signed calls).

chibzly ,

The best iOS xmpp client again

Monal has consistently been updated throughout the years, and is currently the best client on iOS. I had been using Siskin for a while, and it was decent enough, but the lack of proper push notifications was incredibly frustrating. Monal has proper push notifications even with omemo, which is great. I was initially concerned with battery usage, and while settings reports high usage, in practice it has been a non-issue (monal has documentation discussing why this is a measurement error on iOS’s part). Overall I’m pretty pleased right now. There’s still features I’d like to see, and the UI feels a bit buggy sometimes (e.g., uploading images never seems to work the first time…), but this is actually usable right now, even with omemo. I hope it continues to improve!

Developer Response ,

Well, at least mucs are now working, right? ;)
We will include finer control of notifications for muscs (silent, mention, all) in the 5.1 release.

App Privacy

The developer, Molitor und Dietzel, Inh. Thilo Molitor, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

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