The Beeper Mini story continues as the developer behind it has relaunched the app, albeit at the expense of one of its key features.
To give you a crash course on recent events, Beeper Mini is an Android app that allows users to send and receive text messages via the iMessage protocol. Apple eventually found out and subsequently moved to block the service, claiming it posed “significant risks” to user security. Pieper became the company on December 11 managed to restore connectivityHowever, people now have to log in with their AppleID credentials, while previously you only had to enter the phone number of your Android smartphone.
This ease of use was especially attractive because you were not forced to add or create a new login. According to Beeper's report, text messages will instead be exchanged via the email address on your AppleID. This won't be nearly as useful as The edge points out, but at least people can still communicate with iMessage.
Working things out
There are plans to restore phone number registration later, although there's no word on when the feature will return. To make up for the downsizing, Beeper Mini will now be able to move freely until the day comes when things stabilize. At that point, Beeper can re-enter the monthly rate. You can leave the $2 subscription enabled as a way to support Beeper during these times, but it is not a requirement.
The company states in its blog post that it will continue to work to ensure that Beeper Mini becomes a successful service on Android. Apple is clearly the biggest obstacle to achieving this goal, so Beeper had decided to extend an olive branch to the tech giant by making two commitments.
One: If Apple truly believes Beeper Mini is a threat to the security of iOS users, the developer says it will share the app's entire code base “with a mutually agreed upon third-party security research firm.” Second, at Apple's insistence, Beeper could consider “adding a pager emoji” to the metadata of all messages coming from their app. The purpose of the emoji is to make it easier for iMessages to filter texts from Beeper Mini.
Mounting pressure
The question now is: will Apple leave the service alone? It's hard to say. Apple certainly isn't afraid to bring down the hammer, despite pressure from other companies and government groups. That said, Apple is not inflexible. Hell froze over in mid-November when it finally decided to support the RCS protocol from Android phones. Furthermore, this whole situation caught the attention of the US government. Senator Elizabeth Warren on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) called on Apple to allow Beeper Mini to exist.
She acknowledges the fact that the “green bubble texts (of Android) are less secure” and puts forward the idea of expanding security measures and making communication between the two platforms easier.
The updated Beeper Mini is currently available for download on the Google Play Store. We reached out to the developer at This story will be updated at a later date.