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"
22 alt="Google Play">
23 </a>
24 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WD35AAC/">
25 <img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/AmazonMobileApps/amazon-apps-store-us-black.png"
26 alt="Amazon App Store">
27 </a>
28</p>
29
30
31
32## Design principles
33
34* Be as beautiful and easy to use as possible without sacrificing security or
35 privacy
36* Rely on existing, well established protocols (XMPP)
37* Do not require a Google Account or specifically Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)
38
39## Features
40
41* End-to-end encryption with [OMEMO](http://conversations.im/omemo/) or [OpenPGP](http://openpgp.org/about/)
42* Send and receive images as well as other kind of files
43* Share your location
44* Send voice messages
45* Indication when your contact has read your message
46* Intuitive UI that follows Android Design guidelines
47* Pictures / Avatars for your Contacts
48* Synchronizes with desktop client
49* Conferences (with support for bookmarks)
50* Address book integration
51* Multiple accounts / unified inbox
52* Very low impact on battery life
53
54
55### XMPP Features
56
57Conversations works with every XMPP server out there. However XMPP is an
58extensible protocol. These extensions are standardized as well in so called
59XEP's. Conversations supports a couple of these to make the overall user
60experience better. There is a chance that your current XMPP server does not
61support these extensions; therefore to get the most out of Conversations you
62should consider either switching to an XMPP server that does or — even better —
63run your own XMPP server for you and your friends. These XEP's are:
64
65* [XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0065.html) (or mod_proxy65). Will be used to transfer
66 files if both parties are behind a firewall (NAT).
67* [XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html) for avatars and OMEMO.
68* [XEP-0191: Blocking command](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0191.html) lets you blacklist spammers or block contacts
69 without removing them from your roster.
70* [XEP-0198: Stream Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html) allows XMPP to survive small network outages and
71 changes of the underlying TCP connection.
72* [XEP-0280: Message Carbons](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html) which automatically syncs the messages you send to
73 your desktop client and thus allows you to switch seamlessly from your mobile
74 client to your desktop client and back within one conversation.
75* [XEP-0237: Roster Versioning](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0237.html) mainly to save bandwidth on poor mobile connections
76* [XEP-0313: Message Archive Management](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html) synchronize message history with the
77 server. Catch up with messages that were sent while Conversations was
78 offline.
79* [XEP-0352: Client State Indication](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html) lets the server know whether or not
80 Conversations is in the background. Allows the server to save bandwidth by
81 withholding unimportant packages.
82* [XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html) allows you to share files in conferences
83 and with offline contacts.
84
85## FAQ
86
87### General
88
89#### How do I install Conversations?
90
91Conversations is entirely open source and licensed under GPLv3. So if you are a
92software developer you can check out the sources from GitHub and use Gradle to
93build your apk file.
94
95The more convenient way — which not only gives you automatic updates but also
96supports the further development of Conversations — is to buy the App in the
97Google [Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub).
98
99Buying the App from the Play Store will also give you access to our [beta test](#beta).
100
101#### I don't have a Google Account but I would still like to make a contribution
102
103I accept donations over PayPal, bank transfer and various crypto currencies. For donations via PayPal use the button below:
104
105[](https://www.paypal.me/ConversationsIM)
106
107**Disclaimer:** I'm not a huge fan of PayPal and their business policies. For
108larger contributions please get in touch with me beforehand and we can talk
109about bank transfer (SEPA).
110
111##### Crypto currencies
112
113Bitcoin: `1AeqNAcg85APAZj9BZfAjdFCC5zesqXp2B`
114
115Bitcoin Cash: `16ABkXzYAwWz8Y5DcWFfbBRqL63g3hzEaU`
116
117Ether: `0x5c4e5239cd9c6f4a909e4e8361526e2e3c8ba9fa`
118
119#### How do I create an account?
120XMPP, 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.
121
122##### Domain hosting
123Using 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.
124
125Learn more about [conversations.im Jabber/XMPP domain hosting](https://account.conversations.im/domain/).
126
127##### Running your own
128If you already have a server somewhere and are willing and able to put the necessary work in, one alternative-in the spirit of federation-is to run your own. We recommend either [Prosody](https://prosody.im/) or [ejabberd](https://www.ejabberd.im/). Both of which have their own strengths. Ejabberd is slightly more mature nowadays but Prosody is arguably easier to set up.
129
130For Prosody you need a couple of so called [community modules](https://modules.prosody.im/) most of which are maintained by the same people that develop Prosody.
131
132If you pick ejabberd make sure you use the latest version. Linux Distributions might bundle some very old versions of it.
133
134#### Where can I set up a custom hostname / port
135Conversations will automatically look up the SRV records for your domain name
136which can point to any hostname port combination. If your server doesn’t provide
137those please contact your admin and have them read
138[this](http://prosody.im/doc/dns#srv_records). If your server operator is unwilling
139to fix this you can enable advanced server settings in the expert settings of
140Conversations.
141
142#### I get 'Incompatible Server'
143
144As regular user you should be picking a different server. The server you selected
145is probably insecure and/or very old.
146
147If you are a server administrator you should make sure that your server provides
148either STARTTLS or [XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0368.html).
149
150On rare occasions this error message might also be caused by a server not providing
151a login (SASL) mechanism that Conversations is able to handle. Conversations supports
152SCRAM-SHA1, PLAIN, EXTERNAL (client certs) and DIGEST-MD5.
153
154#### I get 'Bind failure'. What does that mean?
155
156Some Bind failures are transient and resolve themselves after a reconnect.
157
158When 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.
159This can be fixed by creating a new account in Conversations that uses the Jabber ID `user@a.tld`.
160
161Note: 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.
162
163Maybe 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.
164
165### I get 'Stream opening error'. What does that mean?
166
167In 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).
168
169
170#### I’m getting this annoying permanent notification
171Starting 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.)
172
173However you can disable the notification via settings of the operating system. (Not settings in Conversations.)
174
175**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.**
176
177##### Android <= 7.1
178The 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.
179
180##### Android 8.x
181Long 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.
182
183##### Android 9.0+
184Long 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.
185
186#### How do XEP-0357: Push Notifications work?
187You 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.)
188
189In 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).
190
191If 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.
192
193You 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.
194
195 ¹ Your server only needs to support the server side of [XEP-0357: Push Notifications](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html). If you use the Play Store version you do **not** need to run your own app server. The server modules are called *mod_cloud_notify* on Prosody and *mod_push* on ejabberd.
196
197
198#### But why do I need a permanent notification if I use Google Push?
199FCM (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/).
200
201#### Conversations doesn’t work for me. Where can I get help?
202
203You can join our conference room on `conversations@conference.siacs.eu`.
204A lot of people in there are able to answer basic questions about the usage of
205Conversations or can provide you with tips on running your own XMPP server. If
206you found a bug or your app crashes please read the Developer / Report Bugs
207section of this document.
208
209#### I need professional support with Conversations or setting up my server
210
211I'm available for hire. Contact me at `inputmice@siacs.eu`.
212
213#### How does the address book integration work?
214
215The address book integration was designed to protect your privacy. Conversations
216neither uploads contacts from your address book to your server nor fills your
217address book with unnecessary contacts from your online roster. If you manually
218add a Jabber ID to your phones address book Conversations will use the name and
219the profile picture of this contact. To make the process of adding Jabber IDs to
220your address book easier you can click on the profile picture in the contact
221details within Conversations. This will start an "add to address book" intent
222with the JID as the payload. This doesn't require Conversations to have write
223permissions on your address book but also doesn't require you to copy/paste a
224JID from one app to another.
225
226#### I get 'delivery failed' on my messages
227
228If you get delivery failed on images it's probably because the recipient lost
229network connectivity during reception. In that case you can try it again at a
230later time.
231
232For text messages the answer to your question is a little bit more complex.
233When you see 'delivery failed' on text messages, it is always something that is
234being reported by the server. The most common reason for this is that the
235recipient failed to resume a connection. When a client loses connectivity for a
236short time the client usually has a five minute window to pick up that
237connection again. When the client fails to do so because the network
238connectivity is out for longer than that all messages sent to that client will
239be returned to the sender resulting in a delivery failed.
240
241Instead of returning a message to the sender both ejabberd and prosody have the
242ability to store messages in offline storage when the disconnecting client is
243the only client. In prosody this is available via an extra module called
244```mod_smacks_offline```. In ejabberd this is available via some configuration
245settings.
246
247Other less common reasons are that the message you sent didn't meet some
248criteria enforced by the server (too large, too many). Another reason could be
249that the recipient is offline and the server doesn't provide offline storage.
250
251Usually you are able to distinguish between these two groups in the fact that
252the first one happens always after some time and the second one happens almost
253instantly.
254
255#### Where can I see the status of my contacts? How can I set a status or priority?
256
257Statuses are a horrible metric. Setting them manually to a proper value rarely
258works because users are either lazy or just forget about them. Setting them
259automatically does not provide quality results either. Keyboard or mouse
260activity as indicator for example fails when the user is just looking at
261something (reading an article, watching a movie). Furthermore automatic setting
262of status always implies an impact on your privacy (are you sure you want
263everybody in your contact list to know that you have been using your computer at
2644am‽).
265
266In the past status has been used to judge the likelihood of whether or not your
267messages are being read. This is no longer necessary. With Chat Markers
268(XEP-0333, supported by Conversations since 0.4) we have the ability to **know**
269whether or not your messages are being read. Similar things can be said for
270priorities. In the past priorities have been used (by servers, not by clients!)
271to route your messages to one specific client. With carbon messages (XEP-0280,
272supported by Conversations since 0.1) this is no longer necessary. Using
273priorities to route OTR messages isn't practical either because they are not
274changeable on the fly. Metrics like last active client (the client which sent
275the last message) are much better.
276
277Unfortunately these modern replacements for legacy XMPP features are not widely
278adopted. However Conversations should be an instant messenger for the future and
279instead of making Conversations compatible with the past we should work on
280implementing new, improved technologies and getting them into other XMPP clients
281as well.
282
283Making these status and priority optional isn't a solution either because
284Conversations is trying to get rid of old behaviours and set an example for
285other clients.
286
287#### Translations
288Translations are managed on [Transifex](https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/conversations/).
289If you want to become a translator Please register on transifex, apply to join
290the translation team and then step by our group chat on
291[conversations@conference.siacs.eu](https://conversations.im/j/conversations@conference.siacs.eu)
292and introduce yourself to `iNPUTmice` so he can approve your join request.
293
294#### How do I backup / move Conversations to a new device?
295On 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.)
296
297As of version 2.4.0 an integrated Backup & Restore function will help with this, go to Settings → Expert settings → 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.
298
299This 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.
300
301In 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.
302
303**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.
304**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.
305
306#### Conversations is missing a certain feature
307
308I'm open for new feature suggestions. You can use the [issue tracker][issues] on
309GitHub. Please take some time to browse through the issues to see if someone
310else already suggested it. Be assured that I read each and every ticket. If I
311like it I will leave it open until it's implemented. If I don't like it I will
312close it (usually with a short comment). If I don't comment on an feature
313request that's probably a good sign because this means I agree with you.
314Commenting with +1 on either open or closed issues won't change my mind, nor
315will it accelerate the development.
316
317#### You closed my feature request but I want it really really badly
318
319Just write it yourself and send me a pull request. If I like it I will happily
320merge it if I don't at least you and like minded people get to enjoy it.
321
322#### I need a feature and I need it now!
323
324I am available for hire. Contact me via XMPP: `inputmice@siacs.eu`
325
326### Security
327
328#### Why are there two end-to-end encryption methods and which one should I choose?
329
330* 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).
331* 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.
332
333#### How do I use OpenPGP
334
335Before you continue reading you should note that the OpenPGP support in
336Conversations is experimental. This is not because it will make the app unstable
337but because the fundamental concepts of PGP aren't ready for widespread use.
338The way PGP works is that you trust Key IDs instead of JID's or email addresses.
339So in theory your contact list should consist of Public-Key-IDs instead of
340JID's. But of course no email or XMPP client out there implements these
341concepts. Plus PGP in the context of instant messaging has a couple of
342downsides: It is vulnerable to replay attacks and it is rather verbose.
343
344To use OpenPGP you have to install the open source app
345[OpenKeychain](http://www.openkeychain.org) and then long press on the account in
346manage accounts and choose renew PGP announcement from the contextual menu.
347
348#### OMEMO is grayed out. What do I do?
349OMEMO 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.
350
351#### OMEMO doesn’t work. I get a 'Something went wrong' message in the 'Trust OMEMO Fingerprints' screen.
352OMEMO 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'.
353
354#### How does the encryption for group chats work?
355
356##### OMEMO
357
358OMEMO 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')
359
360The server of all participants need to pass the OMEMO [Compliance Test](https://conversations.im/compliance/).
361In other words they either need to run Ejabberd 18.01+ or Prosody 0.11+.
362
363(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.)
364
365The owner of a conference can make a public conference private by going into the conference
366details and hit the settings button (the one with the gears) and select both *private* and
367*members only*.
368
369##### OpenPGP
370
371Every participant has to announce their OpenPGP key (see answer above).
372If you would like to send encrypted messages to a conference you have to make
373sure that you have every participant's public key in your OpenKeychain.
374Right now there is no check in Conversations to ensure that.
375You have to take care of that yourself. Go to the conference details and
376touch every key id (The hexadecimal number below a contact). This will send you
377to OpenKeychain which will assist you on adding the key. This works best in
378very small conferences with contacts you are already using OpenPGP with. This
379feature is regarded experimental. Conversations is the only client that uses
380XEP-0027 with conferences. (The XEP neither specifically allows nor disallows
381this.)
382
383#### What is Blind Trust Before Verification / why are messages marked with a red lock?
384
385Read more about the concept on https://gultsch.de/trust.html
386
387#### What happened to OTR support?
388OTR 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.
389
390OTR is still available in [Conversations Legacy](https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/tree/legacy).
391
392### What clients do I use on other platforms
393There are XMPP Clients available for all major platforms.
394#### Windows / Linux
395For 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.
396#### iOS
397Unfortunately 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.
398
399
400### Development
401
402<a name="beta"></a>
403#### Beta testing
404If you bought the App on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations)
405you can get access to the the latest beta version by signing up using [this link](https://play.google.com/apps/testing/eu.siacs.conversations).
406
407#### How do I build Conversations
408
409Make sure to have ANDROID_HOME point to your Android SDK. Use the Android SDK Manager to install missing dependencies.
410
411 git clone https://github.com/siacs/Conversations.git
412 cd Conversations
413 ./gradlew assembleConversationsFreeSystemDebug
414
415There are two build flavors available. *free* and *playstore*. Unless you know what you are doing you only need *free*.
416
417
418[](https://travis-ci.org/siacs/Conversations)
419
420#### How do I update/add external libraries?
421
422If the library you want to update is in Maven Central or JCenter (or has its own
423Maven repo), add it or update its version in `build.gradle`. If the library is
424in the `libs/` directory, you can update it using a subtree merge by doing the
425following (using `minidns` as an example):
426
427 git remote add minidns https://github.com/rtreffer/minidns.git
428 git fetch minidns
429 git merge -s subtree minidns master
430
431To add a new dependency to the `libs/` directory (replacing "name", "branch" and
432"url" as necessary):
433
434 git remote add name url
435 git merge -s ours --no-commit name/branch
436 git read-tree --prefix=libs/name -u name/branch
437 git commit -m "Subtree merged in name"
438
439#### How do I debug Conversations
440
441If something goes wrong Conversations usually exposes very little information in
442the UI (other than the fact that something didn't work). However with adb
443(android debug bridge) you can squeeze some more information out of Conversations.
444These information are especially useful if you are experiencing trouble with
445your connection or with file transfer.
446
447To use adb you have to connect your mobile phone to your computer with an USB cable
448and install `adb`. Most Linux systems have prebuilt packages for that tool. On
449Debian/Ubuntu for example it is called `android-tools-adb`.
450
451Furthermore you might have to enable 'USB debugging' in the Developer options of your
452phone. After that you can just execute the following on your computer:
453
454 adb -d logcat -v time -s conversations
455
456If need be there are also some Apps on the PlayStore that can be used to show the logcat
457directly on your rooted phone. (Search for logcat). However in regards to further processing
458(for example to create an issue here on Github) it is more convenient to just use your PC.
459
460#### I found a bug
461
462Please report it to our [issue tracker][issues]. If your app crashes please
463provide a stack trace. If you are experiencing misbehavior please provide
464detailed steps to reproduce. Always mention whether you are running the latest
465Play Store version or the current HEAD. If you are having problems connecting to
466your XMPP server your file transfer doesn’t work as expected please always
467include a logcat debug output with your issue (see above).
468
469[issues]: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues