1<h1 align="center">Conversations</h1>
2
3<p align="center">Conversations: the very last word in instant messaging</p>
4
5<p align="center">
6 <a href="https://conversations.im/j/conversations@conference.siacs.eu">
7 <img src="https://inverse.chat/badge.svg?room=conversations@conference.siacs.eu"
8 alt="chat on our conference room">
9 </a>
10 <a href="https://travis-ci.org/siacs/Conversations">
11 <img src="https://travis-ci.org/siacs/Conversations.svg?branch=master"
12 alt="build status">
13 </a>
14 <a href="https://bountysource.com/teams/siacs">
15 <img src="https://api.bountysource.com/badge/tracker?tracker_id=519483" alt="Bountysource">
16 </a>
17</p>
18
19<p align="center">
20 <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub">
21 <img src="https://conversations.im/images/en-play-badge.png" alt="Google Play">
22 </a>
23</p>
24
25
26
27## Design principles
28
29* Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or
30 privacy
31* Rely on existing, well established protocols (XMPP)
32* Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)
33
34## Features
35
36* End-to-end encryption with [OMEMO](http://conversations.im/omemo/) or [OpenPGP](http://openpgp.org/about/)
37* Send and receive images as well as other kind of files
38* Make audio and video calls
39* Share your location
40* Send voice messages
41* Indication when your contact has read your message
42* Intuitive UI that follows Android Design guidelines
43* Pictures / Avatars for your Contacts
44* Synchronizes with desktop client
45* Conferences (with support for bookmarks)
46* Address book integration
47* Multiple accounts / unified inbox
48* Very low impact on battery life
49
50
51### XMPP Features
52
53Conversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an
54extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called
55XEP's. Conversations supports a couple of these to make the overall user
56experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not
57support these extensions; therefore to get the most out of Conversations you
58should consider either switching to an XMPP server that does or — even better —
59run your own XMPP server for you and your friends. These XEP's are:
60
61* [XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0065.html) (or mod_proxy65). Will be used to transfer
62 files if both parties are behind a firewall (NAT).
63* [XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html) for avatars and OMEMO.
64* [XEP-0191: Blocking command](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0191.html) lets you blacklist spammers or block contacts
65 without removing them from your roster.
66* [XEP-0198: Stream Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html) allows XMPP to survive small network outages and
67 changes of the underlying TCP connection.
68* [XEP-0280: Message Carbons](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html) which automatically syncs the messages you send to
69 your desktop client and thus allows you to switch seamlessly from your mobile
70 client to your desktop client and back within one conversation.
71* [XEP-0237: Roster Versioning](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0237.html) mainly to save bandwidth on poor mobile connections
72* [XEP-0313: Message Archive Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html) synchronize message history with the
73 server. Catch up with messages that were sent while Conversations was
74 offline.
75* [XEP-0352: Client State Indication](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html) lets the server know whether or not
76 Conversations is in the background. Allows the server to save bandwidth by
77 withholding unimportant packages.
78* [XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html) allows you to share files in conferences
79 and with offline contacts.
80
81## FAQ
82
83### General
84
85#### How do I install Conversations?
86
87Conversations is entirely open source and licensed under GPLv3. So if you are a
88software developer you can check out the sources from GitHub and use Gradle to
89build your apk file.
90
91The more convenient way — which not only gives you automatic updates but also
92supports the further development of Conversations — is to buy the App in the
93Google [Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub).
94
95Buying the App from the Play Store will also give you access to our [beta test](#beta).
96
97#### I don't have a Google Account but I would still like to make a contribution
98
99I accept donations over PayPal, bank transfer and various crypto currencies. For donations via PayPal use the button below:
100
101[](https://www.paypal.me/ConversationsIM)
102
103**Disclaimer:** I'm not a huge fan of PayPal and their business policies. For
104larger contributions please get in touch with me beforehand and we can talk
105about bank transfer (SEPA).
106
107##### Crypto currencies
108
109Bitcoin: `3KAD8vew6tPZDjiUJNnZ3YUoUxrCEVNwFL`
110
111Bitcoin Cash: `16ABkXzYAwWz8Y5DcWFfbBRqL63g3hzEaU`
112
113Ether: `0x5c4e5239cd9c6f4a909e4e8361526e2e3c8ba9fa`
114
115#### How do I create an account?
116XMPP, like email, is a federated protocol, which means that there is not one company you can create an *official XMPP account* with. Instead there are hundreds, or even thousands, of providers out there. One of those providers is our very own [conversations.im](https://account.conversations.im). If you don’t like to use *conversations.im* use a web search engine of your choice to find another provider. Or maybe your university has one. Or you can run your own. Or ask a friend to run one. Once you've found one, you can use Conversations to create an account. Just select *register new account* on server within the create account dialog.
117
118##### Domain hosting
119Using your own domain not only gives you a more recognizable Jabber ID, it also gives you the flexibility to migrate your account between different XMPP providers. This is a good compromise between the responsibilities of having to operate your own server and the downsides of being dependent on a single provider.
120
121Learn more about [conversations.im Jabber/XMPP domain hosting](https://account.conversations.im/domain/).
122
123##### Running your own
124If you already have a server somewhere and are willing and able to put the necessary work in you can run your own XMPP server.
125
126As of 2019 we recommend you use [ejabberd](https://ejabberd.im). The default configuration file already enables everything you need to pass the [Conversations Compliance Suite](https://compliance.conversations.im). Make sure your Linux distribution ships a fairly recent version.
127
128With a little bit of effort [Prosody](https://prosody.im) can be configured to support all necessary extensions as well. However you will have to rely on so called [Community Modules](https://modules.prosody.im/) of varying quality. Prosody can be interesting to people who like to modify their server and create / prototype own modules.
129
130Performance wise - for small deployments - both ejabberd and Prosody should be fine.
131
132#### Where can I set up a custom hostname / port
133Conversations will automatically look up the SRV records for your domain name
134which can point to any hostname port combination. If your server doesn’t provide
135those please contact your admin and have them read
136[this](http://prosody.im/doc/dns#srv_records). If your server operator is unwilling
137to fix this you can enable advanced server settings in the expert settings of
138Conversations.
139
140#### I get 'Incompatible Server'
141
142As regular user you should be picking a different server. The server you selected
143is probably insecure and/or very old.
144
145If you are a server administrator you should make sure that your server provides
146either STARTTLS or [XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0368.html).
147
148On rare occasions this error message might also be caused by a server not providing
149a login (SASL) mechanism that Conversations is able to handle. Conversations supports
150SCRAM-SHA1, PLAIN, EXTERNAL (client certs) and DIGEST-MD5.
151
152#### I get 'Bind failure'. What does that mean?
153
154Some Bind failures are transient and resolve themselves after a reconnect.
155
156When trying to connect to OpenFire the bind failure can be a permanent problem when the domain part of the Jabber ID entered in Conversations doesn’t match the domain the OpenFire server feels responsible for. For example OpenFire is configured to use the domain `a.tld` but the Jabber ID entered is `user@b.tld` where `b.tld` also points to the same host. During bind OpenFire tries to reassign the Jabber to `user@a.tld`. Conversations doesn’t like that.
157This can be fixed by creating a new account in Conversations that uses the Jabber ID `user@a.tld`.
158
159Note: This is kind of a weird quirk in OpenFire. Most other servers would just throw a 'Server not responsible for domain' error instead of attempting to reassign the Jabber ID.
160
161Maybe you attempted to use the Jabber ID `test@b.tld` because `a.tld` doesn’t point to the correct host. In that case you might have to enable the extended connection settings in the expert settings of Conversations and set a host name.
162
163### I get 'Stream opening error'. What does that mean?
164
165In most cases this error is caused by ejabberd advertising support for TLSv1.3 but not properly supporting it. This can happen if the openssl version on the server already supports TLSv1.3 but the fast\_tls wrapper library used by ejabberd not (properly) support it. Upgrading fast\_tls and ejabberd or - theoretically - downgrading openssl should fix the issue. A work around is to explicity disable TLSv1.3 support in the ejabberd configuration. More information can be found on [this issue on the ejabberd issue tracker](https://github.com/processone/ejabberd/issues/2614).
166
167
168#### I’m getting this annoying permanent notification
169Starting with Conversations 2.3.6 Conversations releases distributed over the Google Play Store will display a permanent notification if you are running it on Android 8 and above. This is a rule that it is essentially enforced by the Google Play Store. (You won’t have the problem of a *forced* foreground notification if you are getting your app from F-Droid.)
170
171However you can disable the notification via settings of the operating system. (Not settings in Conversations.)
172
173**The battery consumption and the entire behaviour of Conversations will remain the same (as good or as bad as it was before). Why is Google doing this to you? We have no idea.**
174
175##### Android <= 7.1 or Conversations from F-Droid (all Android versions)
176The foreground notification is still controlled over the expert settings within Conversations as it always has been. Whether or not you need to enable it depends on how aggressive the non-standard 'power saving' features are that your phone vendor has built into the operating system.
177
178##### Android 8.x
179Long press the permanent notification and disable that particular type of notification by moving the slider to the left. This will make the notification disappear but create another notification (this time created by the operating system itself.) that will complain about Conversations (and other apps) using battery. Starting with Android 8.1 you can disable that notification again with the same method described above.
180
181##### Android 9.0+
182Long press the permanent notification and press the info `(i)` button to get into the App info screen. In that screen touch the 'Notification' entry. In the next screen remove the checkbox for the 'Foreground service' entry.
183
184#### How do XEP-0357: Push Notifications work?
185You need to be running the Play Store version of Conversations and your server needs to support push notifications.¹ Because *Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)* are tied with an API key to a specific app your server can not initiate the push message directly. Instead your server will send the push notification to the [Conversations App server](https://github.com/iNPUTmice/p2) (operated by us) which then acts as a proxy and initiates the push message for you. The push message sent from our App server through FCM doesn’t contain any personal information. It is just an empty message which will wake up your device and tell Conversations to reconnect to your server. The information sent from your server to our App server depends on the configuration of your server but can be limited to your account name. (In any case the Conversations App server won't redirect any information through FCM even if your server sends this information.)
186
187In summary Google will never get hold of any personal information besides that *something* happened. (Which doesn’t even have to be a message but can be some automated event as well.) We - as the operator of the App server - will just get hold of your account name (without being able to tie this to your specific device).
188
189If you don’t want this simply pick a server which does not offer Push Notifications or build Conversations yourself without support for push notifications. (This is available via a gradle build flavor.) Non-play store source of Conversations like the Amazon App store will also offer a version without push notifications. Conversations will just work as before and maintain its own TCP connection in the background.
190
191You can find a detailed description of how your server, the app server and FCM are interacting with each other in the [README](https://github.com/iNPUTmice/p2/blob/master/README.md) of the Conversations App Server.
192
193 ¹ If you use the Play Store version you do **not** need to run your own app server. Your server only needs to support the server side of [XEP-0357: Push Notifications](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html) and [XEP-0198: Stream Management](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html). The prosody server modules are called *mod_cloud_notify* and *mod_smacks*. The ejabberd server modules are called *mod_push* and *mod_stream_mgmt*.
194
195
196#### But why do I need a permanent notification if I use Google Push?
197FCM (Google Push) allows an app to wake up from *Doze* which is (as the name suggests) a hibernation feature of the Android operating system that cuts the network connection and also reduces the number of times the app is allowed to wake up (to ping the server for example). The app can ask to be excluded from doze. Non push variants of the app (from F-Droid or if the server doesn’t support it) will do this on first start up. So if you get exemption from *Doze*, or if you get regular push events sent to you, Doze should not pose a threat to Conversatons working properly. But even with *Doze* the app is still open in the background (kept in memory); it is just limited in the actions it can do. Conversations needs to stay in memory to hold certain session state (online status of contacts, join status of group chats, …). However with Android 8 Google changed all of this again and now an App that wants to stay in memory needs to have a foreground service which is visible to the user via the annoying notification. But why does Conversations need to hold that state? XMPP is a stateful protocol that has a lot of per-session information; packets need to be counted, presence information needs to be held, some features like Message Carbons get activated once per session, MAM catchup happens once, service discovery happens only once; the list goes on. When Conversations was created in early 2014 none of this was a problem because apps were just allowed to stay in memory. Basically every XMPP client out there holds that information in memory because it would be a lot more complicated trying to persist it to disk. An entire rewrite of Conversations in the year 2019 would attempt to do that and would probably succeed however it would require exactly that; a complete rewrite which is not feasible right now. That’s by the way also the reason why it is difficult to write an XMPP client on iOS. Or more broadly put this is also the reason why other protocols are designed as or migrated to stateless protocols (often based on HTTP); take for example the migration of IMAP to [JMAP](https://jmap.io/).
198
199#### Conversations doesn’t work for me. Where can I get help?
200
201You can join our conference room on [`conversations@conference.siacs.eu`](https://conversations.im/j/conversations@conference.siacs.eu).
202A lot of people in there are able to answer basic questions about the usage of
203Conversations or can provide you with tips on running your own XMPP server. If
204you found a bug or your app crashes please read the Developer / Report Bugs
205section of this document.
206
207#### I need professional support with Conversations or setting up my server
208
209I'm available for hire. Contact information can be found on [my website](https://gultsch.de).
210
211#### How does the address book integration work?
212
213The address book integration was designed to protect your privacy. Conversations
214neither uploads contacts from your address book to your server nor fills your
215address book with unnecessary contacts from your online roster. If you manually
216add a Jabber ID to your phones address book Conversations will use the name and
217the profile picture of this contact. To make the process of adding Jabber IDs to
218your address book easier you can click on the profile picture in the contact
219details within Conversations. This will start an "add to address book" intent
220with the JID as the payload. This doesn't require Conversations to have write
221permissions on your address book but also doesn't require you to copy/paste a
222JID from one app to another.
223
224#### I get 'delivery failed' on my messages
225
226If you get delivery failed on images it's probably because the recipient lost
227network connectivity during reception. In that case you can try it again at a
228later time.
229
230For text messages the answer to your question is a little bit more complex.
231When you see 'delivery failed' on text messages, it is always something that is
232being reported by the server. The most common reason for this is that the
233recipient failed to resume a connection. When a client loses connectivity for a
234short time the client usually has a five minute window to pick up that
235connection again. When the client fails to do so because the network
236connectivity is out for longer than that all messages sent to that client will
237be returned to the sender resulting in a delivery failed.
238
239Instead of returning a message to the sender both ejabberd and prosody have the
240ability to store messages in offline storage when the disconnecting client is
241the only client. In prosody this is available via an extra module called
242```mod_smacks_offline```. In ejabberd this is available via some configuration
243settings.
244
245Other less common reasons are that the message you sent didn't meet some
246criteria enforced by the server (too large, too many). Another reason could be
247that the recipient is offline and the server doesn't provide offline storage.
248
249Usually you are able to distinguish between these two groups in the fact that
250the first one happens always after some time and the second one happens almost
251instantly.
252
253#### Where can I see the status of my contacts? How can I set a status or priority?
254
255Statuses are a horrible metric. Setting them manually to a proper value rarely
256works because users are either lazy or just forget about them. Setting them
257automatically does not provide quality results either. Keyboard or mouse
258activity as indicator for example fails when the user is just looking at
259something (reading an article, watching a movie). Furthermore automatic setting
260of status always implies an impact on your privacy (are you sure you want
261everybody in your contact list to know that you have been using your computer at
2624am‽).
263
264In the past status has been used to judge the likelihood of whether or not your
265messages are being read. This is no longer necessary. With Chat Markers
266(XEP-0333, supported by Conversations since 0.4) we have the ability to **know**
267whether or not your messages are being read. Similar things can be said for
268priorities. In the past priorities have been used (by servers, not by clients!)
269to route your messages to one specific client. With carbon messages (XEP-0280,
270supported by Conversations since 0.1) this is no longer necessary. Using
271priorities to route OTR messages isn't practical either because they are not
272changeable on the fly. Metrics like last active client (the client which sent
273the last message) are much better.
274
275Unfortunately these modern replacements for legacy XMPP features are not widely
276adopted. However Conversations should be an instant messenger for the future and
277instead of making Conversations compatible with the past we should work on
278implementing new, improved technologies and getting them into other XMPP clients
279as well.
280
281Making these status and priority optional isn't a solution either because
282Conversations is trying to get rid of old behaviours and set an example for
283other clients.
284
285#### Translations
286Translations are managed on [Transifex](https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/conversations/).
287If you want to become a translator Please register on transifex, apply to join
288the translation team and then step by our group chat on
289[conversations@conference.siacs.eu](https://conversations.im/j/conversations@conference.siacs.eu)
290and introduce yourself to `iNPUTmice` so he can approve your join request.
291
292#### How do I backup / move Conversations to a new device?
293On the one hand Conversations supports Message Archive Management to keep a server side history of your messages so when migrating to a new device that device can display your entire history. However that does not work if you enable OMEMO due to its forward secrecy. (Read [The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016](https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html) especially the section on encryption.)
294
295As of version 2.4.0 an integrated Backup & Restore function will help with this, go to Settings and you’ll find a setting called Create backup. A notification will pop-up during the creation process that will announce you when it's ready. After the files, one for each account, are created, you can move the **Conversations** folder *(if you want your old media files too)* or only the **Conversations/Backup** folder *(for OMEMO keys and history only)* to your new device (or to a storage place) where a freshly installed Conversations can restore each account. Don't forget to enable the accounts after a succesful restore.
296
297This backup method will include your OMEMO keys. Due to forward secrecy you will not be able to recover messages sent and received between creating the backup and restoring it. If you have a server side archive (MAM) those messages will be retrieved but displayed as *unable to decrypt*. For technical reasons you might also lose the first message you either sent or receive after the restore; for each conversation you have. This message will then also show up as *unable to decrypt*, but this will automatically recover itself as long as both participants are on Conversations 2.3.11+. Note that this doesn’t happen if you just transfer to a new phone and no messages have been exchanged between backup and restore.
298
299In the vast, vast majority of cases you won’t have to manually delete OMEMO keys or do anything like that. Conversations only introduced the offical backup feature in 2.4.0 after making sure the *OMEMO self healing* mechanism introduced in 2.3.11 works fine.
300
301**WARNING**: Be sure to know your accounts passwords or find ways to reset them **before** doing the backup as the files are encrypted using those passwords and the Restore process will ask for them.
302**WARNING**: Do not use the restore backup feature in an attempt to clone (run simultaneously) an installation. Restoring a backup is only meant for migrations or in case you’ve lost the original device.
303
304#### Conversations is missing a certain feature
305
306I'm open for new feature suggestions. You can use the [issue tracker][issues] on
307GitHub. Please take some time to browse through the issues to see if someone
308else already suggested it. Be assured that I read each and every ticket. If I
309like it I will leave it open until it's implemented. If I don't like it I will
310close it (usually with a short comment). If I don't comment on an feature
311request that's probably a good sign because this means I agree with you.
312Commenting with +1 on either open or closed issues won't change my mind, nor
313will it accelerate the development.
314
315#### You closed my feature request but I want it really really badly
316
317Just write it yourself and send me a pull request. If I like it I will happily
318merge it if I don't at least you and like minded people get to enjoy it.
319
320#### I need a feature and I need it now!
321
322I am available for hire. Find contact information on [my website](https://gultsch.de).
323
324### Security
325
326#### Why are there two end-to-end encryption methods and which one should I choose?
327
328* OMEMO works even when a contact is offline, and works with multiple devices. It also allows asynchronous file-transfer when the server has [HTTP File Upload](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html). However, OMEMO not widely support and is currently implemented only [by a handful of clients](https://omemo.top).
329* OpenPGP (XEP-0027) is a very old encryption method that has some advantages over OMEMO but should only be used by people who know what they are doing.
330
331#### How do I use OpenPGP
332
333Before you continue reading you should note that the OpenPGP support in
334Conversations is experimental. This is not because it will make the app unstable
335but because the fundamental concepts of PGP aren't ready for widespread use.
336The way PGP works is that you trust Key IDs instead of JID's or email addresses.
337So in theory your contact list should consist of Public-Key-IDs instead of
338JID's. But of course no email or XMPP client out there implements these
339concepts. Plus PGP in the context of instant messaging has a couple of
340downsides: It is vulnerable to replay attacks and it is rather verbose.
341
342To use OpenPGP you have to install the open source app
343[OpenKeychain](http://www.openkeychain.org) and then long press on the account in
344manage accounts and choose renew PGP announcement from the contextual menu.
345
346#### OMEMO is grayed out. What do I do?
347OMEMO is only available in 1:1 chats and private (members-only, non-anonymous) group chats. Encrypting public group chats makes little to no sense since anyone (including a hypothetical attacker) can join and a user couldn’t possibily verify all participants anyway. Furthermore for a lot of public group chat it is desirable to give new comers access to the full history.
348
349#### OMEMO doesn’t work. I get a 'Something went wrong' message in the 'Trust OMEMO Fingerprints' screen.
350OMEMO has two requirements: Your server and the server of your contact need to support PEP. Both of you can verify that individually by opening your account details and selecting ```Server info``` from the menu. The appearing table should list PEP as available. The second requirement is that the initial sender needs to have access to the published key material. This can either be achieved by having mutual presence subscription (you can verify that by opening the contact details and see if both check boxes *Send presence updates* and *Receive presence updates* are checked) or by using a server that makes the public key material accessible to anyone. In the [Compliance Tester](https://compliance.conversations.im) this is indicated by the 'OMEMO' feature. Since it is very common that the first messages are exchanged *before* adding each other to the contact list it is desirable to use servers that have 'OMEMO support'.
351
352#### How does the encryption for group chats work?
353
354##### OMEMO
355
356OMEMO encryption works only in private (members only) conferences that are non-anonymous. Non-anonymous (being able to discover the real JID of other participants) is a technical requirement to discover the key material. Members only is a sort of arbitrary requirement imposed by Conversations. (see 'OMEMO is grayed out')
357
358The server of all participants need to pass the OMEMO [Compliance Test](https://conversations.im/compliance/).
359In other words they either need to run Ejabberd 18.01+ or Prosody 0.11+.
360
361(Alternatively it would also work if all participants had each other in their contact list; But that rarely is the case in larger group chats.)
362
363The owner of a conference can make a public conference private by going into the conference
364details and hit the settings button (the one with the gears) and select both *private* and
365*members only*.
366
367##### OpenPGP
368
369Every participant has to announce their OpenPGP key (see answer above).
370If you would like to send encrypted messages to a conference you have to make
371sure that you have every participant's public key in your OpenKeychain.
372Right now there is no check in Conversations to ensure that.
373You have to take care of that yourself. Go to the conference details and
374touch every key id (The hexadecimal number below a contact). This will send you
375to OpenKeychain which will assist you on adding the key. This works best in
376very small conferences with contacts you are already using OpenPGP with. This
377feature is regarded experimental. Conversations is the only client that uses
378XEP-0027 with conferences. (The XEP neither specifically allows nor disallows
379this.)
380
381#### What is Blind Trust Before Verification / why are messages marked with a red lock?
382
383Read more about the concept on https://gultsch.de/trust.html
384
385#### What happened to OTR support?
386OTR was removed because it was highly unreliable. It didn’t work with multiple devices and was never really specified to work with XMPP. The codebase was a mess (There was an HTML parser in there for crying out loud to deal with the garbage some OTR clients would send.) Verification was implemented in a non-blocking way. It would tell you if the current session was using an unknown fingerprint but it didn’t actively stopped you from sending messages until you have confirmed the new fingerprint. (Like Conversations would do now with BTBV after verification or when BTBV is turned off.) Considering the previous points there was little to no desire from my point to fix this potential security issue or clean up the code base. Another reason for the removal was that people would use it *accidentally* even to communicate between two Conversations clients because they read somewhere that OTR is good.
387
388### What clients do I use on other platforms
389There are XMPP Clients available for all major platforms.
390#### Windows / Linux
391For your desktop computer we recommend that you use [Gajim](https://gajim.org). You need to install the plugins `OMEMO`, `HTTP Upload` and `URL image preview` to get the best compatibility with Conversations. Plugins can be installed from within the app.
392#### iOS
393Unfortunately we don‘t have a recommendation for iPhones right now. There are two clients available [ChatSecure](https://chatsecure.org/) and [Monal](https://monal.im/). Both with their own pros and cons.
394
395
396### Development
397
398<a name="beta"></a>
399#### Beta testing
400If you bought the App on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations)
401you can get access to the the latest beta version by signing up using [this link](https://play.google.com/apps/testing/eu.siacs.conversations).
402
403#### How do I build Conversations
404
405**Note:** Starting with version 2.8.0 you will need to compile libwebrtc.
406[Instructions](https://webrtc.github.io/webrtc-org/native-code/android/) can be found on the WebRTC
407website. Place the resulting libwebrtc.aar in the `libs/` directory. The PlayStore release currently
408uses the stable M81 release and renamed the file name to `libwebrtc-m81.aar` put potentially you can
409reference any file name by modifying `build.gradle`.
410
411Make sure to have ANDROID_HOME point to your Android SDK. Use the Android SDK Manager to install missing dependencies.
412
413 git clone https://github.com/siacs/Conversations.git
414 cd Conversations
415 ./gradlew assembleConversationsFreeSystemDebug
416
417There are two build flavors available. *free* and *playstore*. Unless you know what you are doing you only need *free*.
418
419
420[](https://travis-ci.org/siacs/Conversations)
421
422#### How do I update/add external libraries?
423
424If the library you want to update is in Maven Central or JCenter (or has its own
425Maven repo), add it or update its version in `build.gradle`. If the library is
426in the `libs/` directory, you can update it using a subtree merge by doing the
427following (using `minidns` as an example):
428
429 git remote add minidns https://github.com/rtreffer/minidns.git
430 git fetch minidns
431 git merge -s subtree minidns master
432
433To add a new dependency to the `libs/` directory (replacing "name", "branch" and
434"url" as necessary):
435
436 git remote add name url
437 git merge -s ours --no-commit name/branch
438 git read-tree --prefix=libs/name -u name/branch
439 git commit -m "Subtree merged in name"
440
441#### How do I debug Conversations
442
443If something goes wrong Conversations usually exposes very little information in
444the UI (other than the fact that something didn't work). However with adb
445(android debug bridge) you can squeeze some more information out of Conversations.
446These information are especially useful if you are experiencing trouble with
447your connection or with file transfer.
448
449To use adb you have to connect your mobile phone to your computer with an USB cable
450and install `adb`. Most Linux systems have prebuilt packages for that tool. On
451Debian/Ubuntu for example it is called `android-tools-adb`.
452
453Furthermore you might have to enable 'USB debugging' in the Developer options of your
454phone. After that you can just execute the following on your computer:
455
456 adb -d logcat -v time -s conversations
457
458If need be there are also some Apps on the PlayStore that can be used to show the logcat
459directly on your rooted phone. (Search for logcat). However in regards to further processing
460(for example to create an issue here on Github) it is more convenient to just use your PC.
461
462#### I found a bug
463
464Please report it to our [issue tracker][issues]. If your app crashes please
465provide a stack trace. If you are experiencing misbehavior please provide
466detailed steps to reproduce. Always mention whether you are running the latest
467Play Store version or the current HEAD. If you are having problems connecting to
468your XMPP server your file transfer doesn’t work as expected please always
469include a logcat debug output with your issue (see above).
470
471[issues]: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues