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://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations&referrer=utm_source%3Dcodeberg">
7 <img src="https://conversations.im/images/get-it-on-play.png" alt="Get it on Google Play" height="80">
8 </a>
9 <a href="https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.siacs.conversations">
10 <img src="https://fdroid.gitlab.io/artwork/badge/get-it-on.png" alt="Get it on F-Droid" height="80">
11 </a>
12</p>
13
14<p align="center">
15<img src="https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/raw/branch/master/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/phoneScreenshots/01.png" width="216"/>
16<img src="https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/raw/branch/master/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/phoneScreenshots/02.png" width="216"/>
17<img src="https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/raw/branch/master/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/phoneScreenshots/03.png" width="216"/>
18<img src="https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/raw/branch/master/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/phoneScreenshots/04.png" width="216"/>
19<img src="https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/raw/branch/master/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/phoneScreenshots/05.png" width="216"/>
20</p>
21
22## Design principles
23
24* Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or
25 privacy
26* Rely on existing, well established protocols (XMPP)
27* Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)
28
29## Features
30
31* End-to-end encryption with [OMEMO](http://conversations.im/omemo/) or [OpenPGP](http://openpgp.org/about/)
32* Send and receive images as well as other kind of files
33* [Encrypted audio and video calls (DTLS-SRTP)](https://help.conversations.im)
34* Share your location
35* Send voice messages
36* Indication when your contact has read your message
37* Intuitive UI that follows Android Design guidelines
38* Pictures / Avatars for your Contacts
39* Synchronizes with desktop client
40* Conferences (with support for bookmarks)
41* Address book integration
42* Multiple accounts / unified inbox
43* Very low impact on battery life
44
45
46### XMPP Features
47
48Conversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an
49extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called
50XEP's. Conversations supports a couple of these to make the overall user
51experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not
52support these extensions; therefore to get the most out of Conversations you
53should consider either switching to an XMPP server that does or — even better —
54run your own XMPP server for you and your friends. These XEP's are:
55
56* [XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0065.html) will be used to transfer
57 files if both parties are behind a firewall (NAT).
58* [XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html) for avatars and OMEMO.
59* [XEP-0191: Blocking command](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0191.html) lets you blacklist spammers or block contacts
60 without removing them from your roster.
61* [XEP-0198: Stream Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html) allows XMPP to survive small network outages and
62 changes of the underlying TCP connection.
63* [XEP-0215: External Service Discovery](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0215.html) will be used to discover STUN and TURN servers which facilitate P2P A/V calls.
64* [XEP-0280: Message Carbons](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html) which automatically syncs the messages you send to
65 your desktop client and thus allows you to switch seamlessly from your mobile
66 client to your desktop client and back within one conversation.
67* [XEP-0237: Roster Versioning](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0237.html) mainly to save bandwidth on poor mobile connections
68* [XEP-0313: Message Archive Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html) synchronize message history with the
69 server. Catch up with messages that were sent while Conversations was
70 offline.
71* [XEP-0352: Client State Indication](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html) lets the server know whether or not
72 Conversations is in the background. Allows the server to save bandwidth by
73 withholding unimportant packages.
74* [XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html) allows you to share files in conferences
75 and with offline contacts.
76
77## FAQ
78
79### General
80
81#### How do I install Conversations?
82
83Conversations is entirely open source and licensed under GPLv3. So if you are a
84software developer you can check out the sources from GitHub and use Gradle to
85build your apk file.
86
87Conversations is available on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations) and on [F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/).
88
89#### I don't have a Google Account but I would still like to make a donation
90
91I’m listing several options to support me financially on [my website](https://gultsch.de/donate.html). Among other things [Liberapay](https://liberapay.com/iNPUTmice/donate), [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/inputmice) and bank transfer.
92
93#### How do I create an account?
94XMPP, 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.
95
96##### Domain hosting
97Using 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.
98
99Learn more about [conversations.im Jabber/XMPP domain hosting](https://account.conversations.im/domain/).
100
101##### Running your own
102If you already have a server somewhere and are willing and able to put the necessary work in you can run your own XMPP server.
103
104As of 2023 XMPP has reached a level of maturity where all major XMPP servers ([ejabberd](https://ejabberd.im), [Prosody](https://prosody.im), [Openfire](https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/), [Tigase](https://tigase.net/xmpp-server/)) should work well with Conversations.
105
106Interoperability with Prosody and ejabberd is tested fairly regularly just because of their market share but we occasionally test with other servers too and fix issues as soon as we are being made aware of them.
107
108The default configurations are usually fine but you might want to use the [Conversations Compliance Suite](https://compliance.conversations.im) after install just to be sure.
109
110#### Where can I set up a custom hostname / port
111Conversations will automatically look up the SRV records for your domain name
112which can point to any hostname port combination. If your server doesn’t provide
113those please contact your admin and have them read
114[this](http://prosody.im/doc/dns#srv_records). If your server operator is unwilling
115to fix this you can enable advanced server settings in the expert settings of
116Conversations.
117
118#### I get 'Incompatible Server'
119
120As regular user you should be picking a different server. The server you selected
121is probably insecure and/or very old.
122
123If you are a server administrator you should make sure that your server provides
124either STARTTLS or [XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0368.html).
125
126On rare occasions this error message might also be caused by a server not providing
127a login (SASL) mechanism that Conversations is able to handle. Conversations supports
128SCRAM-SHA1, PLAIN, EXTERNAL (client certs) and DIGEST-MD5.
129
130#### I get 'Bind failure'. What does that mean?
131
132Some Bind failures are transient and resolve themselves after a reconnect.
133
134When 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.
135This can be fixed by creating a new account in Conversations that uses the Jabber ID `user@a.tld`.
136
137Note: 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.
138
139Maybe 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.
140
141#### I get 'Stream opening error'. What does that mean?
142
143In 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 explicitly 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).
144
145
146#### I’m getting this annoying permanent notification
147Starting 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.)
148
149However you can disable the notification via settings of the operating system. (Not settings in Conversations.)
150
151**The battery consumption and the entire behavior 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.**
152
153##### Android <= 7.1 or Conversations from F-Droid (all Android versions)
154The 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.
155
156##### Android 8.x
157Long 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.
158
159##### Android 9.0+
160Long 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.
161
162#### How do XEP-0357: Push Notifications work?
163You 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.)
164
165In 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).
166
167If 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.
168
169You 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.
170
171 Âą 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*.
172
173
174#### But why do I need a permanent notification if I use Google Push?
175FCM (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 statefull 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 catch-up 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/).
176
177#### Conversations doesn’t work for me. Where can I get help?
178
179You can join our conference room on [`conversations@conference.siacs.eu`](https://conversations.im/j/conversations@conference.siacs.eu).
180A lot of people in there are able to answer basic questions about the usage of
181Conversations or can provide you with tips on running your own XMPP server. If
182you found a bug or your app crashes please read the Developer / Report Bugs
183section of this document.
184
185#### I need professional support with Conversations or setting up my server
186
187I'm available for hire. Contact information can be found on [my website](https://gultsch.de).
188
189#### How does the address book integration work?
190
191The address book integration was designed to protect your privacy. Conversations
192neither uploads contacts from your address book to your server nor fills your
193address book with unnecessary contacts from your online roster. If you manually
194add a Jabber ID to your phones address book Conversations will use the name and
195the profile picture of this contact. To make the process of adding Jabber IDs to
196your address book easier you can click on the profile picture in the contact
197details within Conversations. This will start an "add to address book" intent
198with the JID as the payload. This doesn't require Conversations to have write
199permissions on your address book but also doesn't require you to copy/paste a
200JID from one app to another.
201
202#### I get 'delivery failed' on my messages
203
204If you get delivery failed on images it's probably because the recipient lost
205network connectivity during reception. In that case you can try it again at a
206later time.
207
208For text messages the answer to your question is a little bit more complex.
209When you see 'delivery failed' on text messages, it is always something that is
210being reported by the server. The most common reason for this is that the
211recipient failed to resume a connection. When a client loses connectivity for a
212short time the client usually has a five minute window to pick up that
213connection again. When the client fails to do so because the network
214connectivity is out for longer than that all messages sent to that client will
215be returned to the sender resulting in a delivery failed.
216
217Instead of returning a message to the sender both ejabberd and prosody have the
218ability to store messages in offline storage when the disconnecting client is
219the only client. In prosody this is available via an extra module called
220```mod_smacks_offline```. In ejabberd this is available via some configuration
221settings.
222
223Other less common reasons are that the message you sent didn't meet some
224criteria enforced by the server (too large, too many). Another reason could be
225that the recipient is offline and the server doesn't provide offline storage.
226
227Usually you are able to distinguish between these two groups in the fact that
228the first one happens always after some time and the second one happens almost
229instantly.
230
231#### Where can I see the status of my contacts? How can I set a status or priority?
232
233Statuses are a horrible metric. Setting them manually to a proper value rarely
234works because users are either lazy or just forget about them. Setting them
235automatically does not provide quality results either. Keyboard or mouse
236activity as indicator for example fails when the user is just looking at
237something (reading an article, watching a movie). Furthermore automatic setting
238of status always implies an impact on your privacy (are you sure you want
239everybody in your contact list to know that you have been using your computer at
2404am‽).
241
242In the past status has been used to judge the likelihood of whether or not your
243messages are being read. This is no longer necessary. With Chat Markers
244(XEP-0333, supported by Conversations since 0.4) we have the ability to **know**
245whether or not your messages are being read. Similar things can be said for
246priorities. In the past priorities have been used (by servers, not by clients!)
247to route your messages to one specific client. With carbon messages (XEP-0280,
248supported by Conversations since 0.1) this is no longer necessary. Using
249priorities to route OTR messages isn't practical either because they are not
250changeable on the fly. Metrics like last active client (the client which sent
251the last message) are much better.
252
253Unfortunately these modern replacements for legacy XMPP features are not widely
254adopted. However Conversations should be an instant messenger for the future and
255instead of making Conversations compatible with the past we should work on
256implementing new, improved technologies and getting them into other XMPP clients
257as well.
258
259Making these status and priority optional isn't a solution either because
260Conversations is trying to get rid of old behaviours and set an example for
261other clients.
262
263#### Translations
264Translations are managed on [Weblate](https://translate.codeberg.org/projects/conversations/).
265
266You can log in with your Codeberg account and start translating.
267
268#### How do I backup / move Conversations to a new device?
269
270See the dedicated guides for
271- [backups](docs/user/backup.md)
272- [migrations](docs/user/migrating_to_new_device.md)
273
274#### Conversations is missing a certain feature
275
276I'm open for new feature suggestions. You can use the [issue tracker][https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/issues]
277on Codeberg. Please take some time to browse through the issues to see if someone
278else already suggested it. Be assured that I read each and every ticket. If I
279like it I will leave it open until it's implemented. If I don't like it I will
280close it (usually with a short comment). If I don't comment on an feature
281request that's probably a good sign because this means I agree with you.
282Commenting with +1 on either open or closed issues won't change my mind, nor
283will it accelerate the development.
284
285#### You closed my feature request but I want it really really badly
286
287Just write it yourself and send me a pull request. If I like it I will happily
288merge it if I don't at least you and like minded people get to enjoy it.
289
290#### I need a feature and I need it now!
291
292I am available for hire. Find contact information on [my website](https://gultsch.de).
293
294### Security
295
296#### Why are there two end-to-end encryption methods and which one should I choose?
297
298* 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).
299* 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.
300
301#### How do I use OpenPGP
302
303Before you continue reading you should note that the OpenPGP support in
304Conversations is experimental. This is not because it will make the app unstable
305but because the fundamental concepts of PGP aren't ready for widespread use.
306The way PGP works is that you trust Key IDs instead of JID's or email addresses.
307So in theory your contact list should consist of Public-Key-IDs instead of
308JID's. But of course no email or XMPP client out there implements these
309concepts. Plus PGP in the context of instant messaging has a couple of
310downsides: It is vulnerable to replay attacks and it is rather verbose.
311
312To use OpenPGP you have to install the open source app
313[OpenKeychain](http://www.openkeychain.org) and then long press on the account in
314manage accounts and choose renew PGP announcement from the contextual menu.
315
316#### OMEMO is grayed out. What do I do?
317OMEMO 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.
318
319#### OMEMO doesn’t work. I get a 'Something went wrong' message in the 'Trust OMEMO Fingerprints' screen.
320OMEMO 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'.
321
322#### How does the encryption for group chats work?
323
324##### OMEMO
325
326OMEMO 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')
327
328The server of all participants need to pass the OMEMO [Compliance Test](https://conversations.im/compliance/).
329In other words they either need to run ejabberd 18.01+ or Prosody 0.11+.
330
331(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.)
332
333The owner of a conference can make a public conference private by going into the conference
334details and hit the settings button (the one with the gears) and select both *private* and
335*members only*.
336
337##### OpenPGP
338
339Every participant has to announce their OpenPGP key (see answer above).
340If you would like to send encrypted messages to a conference you have to make
341sure that you have every participant's public key in your OpenKeychain.
342Right now there is no check in Conversations to ensure that.
343You have to take care of that yourself. Go to the conference details and
344touch every key id (The hexadecimal number below a contact). This will send you
345to OpenKeychain which will assist you on adding the key. This works best in
346very small conferences with contacts you are already using OpenPGP with. This
347feature is regarded experimental. Conversations is the only client that uses
348XEP-0027 with conferences. (The XEP neither specifically allows nor disallows
349this.)
350
351#### What is Blind Trust Before Verification / why are messages marked with a red lock?
352
353Read more about the concept on https://gultsch.de/trust.html
354
355
356### Development
357
358<a name="beta"></a>
359#### Beta testing
360If you bought the App on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations)
361you can get access to the the latest beta version by signing up using [this link](https://play.google.com/apps/testing/eu.siacs.conversations).
362
363#### How do I build Conversations
364
365Make sure to have ANDROID_HOME point to your Android SDK. Use the Android SDK Manager to install missing dependencies.
366
367Alternatively (and to avoid thinking about environment variables), create a file called local.properties, in the root of the Conversations build tree,
368with the following contents:
369
370```
371## This file must *NOT* be checked into Version Control Systems,
372# as it contains information specific to your local configuration.
373#
374# Location of the SDK. This is only used by Gradle.
375# For customization when using a Version Control System, please read the
376# header note.
377#Wed May 20 16:21:35 CST 2020
378ndk.dir=Path-To-Ndk
379sdk.dir=Path-To-Sdk
380```
381
382Then issue the following commands in order to build the apk.
383
384 git clone https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations.git
385 cd Conversations
386 ./gradlew assembleConversationsFreeDebug
387
388There are two build flavors available. *free* and *playstore*. Unless you know what you are doing you only need *free*.
389
390You will find the apks in the `./build/outputs/apk/conversationsFree/debug/` directory.
391
392Be careful, the resulting apks will not install unless you delete your existing Conversations installation (which will delete all the messages from your phone, and if you have used OMEMO, you will not be able to restore them from the server).
393Do it at your own risk.
394
395You, though, can make your own build a "test build", that can be installed alongside the normal (F-Droid or Google Play) Conversations:
396
397In the file `build.gradle`, find the line `applicationId "eu.siacs.conversations"` , and replace it with `applicationId "my.conversations.fork"`, also below replace "Conversations" appName with "MyCFork".
398Then the resulting APK can be installed ALONGSIDE normal Conversations. And have a different name so it's not confusing
399
400WARNING: DO NOT REPLACE ANYTHING ELSE ANYWHERE ELSE, DO NOT REPLACE THIS PROJECT WIDE. JUST 2 strings in THAT specific file!
401
402#### How do I debug Conversations
403
404If something goes wrong Conversations usually exposes very little information in
405the UI (other than the fact that something didn't work). However with adb
406(android debug bridge) you can squeeze some more information out of Conversations.
407These information are especially useful if you are experiencing trouble with
408your connection or with file transfer.
409
410To use adb you have to connect your mobile phone to your computer with an USB cable
411and install `adb`. Most Linux systems have prebuilt packages for that tool. On
412Debian/Ubuntu for example it is called `android-tools-adb`.
413
414Furthermore you might have to enable 'USB debugging' in the Developer options of your
415phone. After that you can just execute the following on your computer:
416
417 adb -d logcat -v time -s conversations
418
419If need be there are also some Apps on the PlayStore that can be used to show the logcat
420directly on your rooted phone. (Search for logcat). However in regards to further processing
421(for example to create an issue here on Codeberg) it is more convenient to just use your PC.
422
423#### I found a bug
424
425Please report it to our [issue tracker](https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/issues). If your app crashes please
426provide a stack trace. If you are experiencing misbehavior please provide
427detailed steps to reproduce. Always mention whether you are running the latest
428Play Store version or the current HEAD. If you are having problems connecting to
429your XMPP server your file transfer doesn’t work as expected please always
430include a logcat debug output with your issue (see above).