Show HN: Amber – better Beeper, a modern all-in-one messenger

42•DmitryDolgopolo•5h ago

Hi HN! Excited to share early access to Amber.

I’ve tried every all-in-one messenger out there (Beeper included) but they always fell short. No real folders, no AI, clunky UI, no CRM features… As a founder who speaks with hundreds of people every quarter, I needed something better. So I decided to rebuild the entire experience from ground up.

Thoughts from one of our users: "The app I've been searching for for a looong time."

Check it out for free today!

Demo: https://www.loom.com/share/8b5bc80b9893436b9190ae41fc3f0f50

Features: - All messages (Whatsapp, Telegram, iMessage) unified in a beautifully crafted interface. - Split inboxes (folders) to effortlessly focus on work, friends, a particular project.. whatever matters the most right now. - Mark read – no read receipts (even on Whatsapp and Telegram), mark done only when you’re done. - Personal CRM: a lightweight private database of knowledge about each person with (optional) AI pulling important facts straight from conversations. (the latter is coming soon) - Command bar + shortcuts. - Send later + reminders.

Everything is securely stored on-device. All messages are end-to-end encrypted and go straight from your device to the network of choice – never touching our servers.

Comments

jshchnz•4h ago

as much as i want something like this to exist... fool me once, shame on thee; fool me twice, shame on me

with that being said, good luck!

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

thanks

andrewmcwatters•4h ago

You need screenshots on the front page. Put one front and center next to your hero text so it's right there above the fold.

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

Great thought! We're fixing this right now.

andrewmcwatters•4h ago

Best of luck on your work, it does look solid!

0x264•4h ago

Yes, pictures of the user interface will help a lot. Thanks!

giancarlostoro•4h ago

Screenshots and gifs or something like your Loom, you need a little trailer thing that showcases the app, and its top use cases with minimal noise (minimal chat windows for demo purposes). Heck, start with a few messages, then flood in, and showcase how it helps to keep you organized, that sort of thing.

ajsnigrutin•4h ago

Three random services only, and "AI" for some reasons...

Pidgin at least supports service plugins and many more protocols, and doesn't have AI, which is a big plus when we're talking about private messaging.

dingnuts•4h ago

AI feeding into a "private" database, so after the keylogger sends everything to OpenAI you can have a garbage summary!

Or if it uses a local model, enjoy the warmth and sound of your GPU while it consumes all of your system resources for instant messaging on, well, as you put it, three random services

but you know he tried Beeper!!!

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

Our users (including top founders and VCs) usually trust us with the AI features because it saves time and thinking.

However, you can turn off the AI features if you're into full privacy. :)

giancarlostoro•4h ago

> However, you can turn off the AI features if you're into full privacy. :)

I think marketing for AI should always start off with "Includes opt-in AI features should you want them" instead of just "HEY WE HAVE AI" I feel like it would make a lot of people close the browser tab much later than expected.

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

great point

giancarlostoro•4h ago

I'm one who loves some of the AI stuff after being a skeptic, but I see a LOT of immediate hatred for it, sadly even when it is purely opt-in (as it should be tbh).

kingnothing•4h ago

Not what I want to see from the homepage for an app that wants to read all of my messages.

> Secure Connection Failed

> An error occurred during a connection to useamber.app. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

lmao

Seems like a DNS issue. Are you using VPN? We used Framer to host the site.

DmitryDolgopolo•1h ago

The Framer team wonders if you continue experiencing the same issue if you use a different browser. Hope this is helpful.

CryptoBanker•2h ago

Are you on a work computer/network? Your IT department may be blocking things as mine is

devilkin•4h ago

Before I would even consider something like this:

* Where's your privacy policy?

* What/how are you handling the different customer protection laws? What juristictions are you working in? Where's the data hosted?

* Where's the design description?

* What encryption are you actually using? If you rolled your own, then well.. good luck.

* How could you ensure end-to-end encryption over multiple protocols, without either completely reverse engineering said protocols? If your answer here would be that you're using a central server where messages get passed between services (and thus decrypted), it isn't end-to-end.

The site is also very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't. There are so many questions, and zero answers.

giancarlostoro•4h ago

> The site is also very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't.

That's probably the HN front page effect to be fair.

busymom0•2h ago

Something is weird about the javascript or CSS on the site. When I first scroll down, many things didn't animate and didn't show. When I scroll up and then scroll back down again, then they animated in.

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

- Yep. You can read our privacy policy here: https://dimadolgopolovn.notion.site/Amber-Privacy-Policy-256... - Check out the demo in the original post. - We use native API or reverse-engineer a solution depending on the platform. This approach maintains the security standard as high as the original app. Everything is done locally on your computer.

devilkin•4h ago

At that point calling it end-to-end encrypted is not true.

warkdarrior•4h ago

What definition of "end-to-end encrypted" do you refer to, if on-device processing does not qualify? Isn't your device one of the endpoints in E2EE?

magackame•4h ago

In context of instant messaging E2EE usually means that service providers servers don't ever see the plaintext with messages stored on device. Just the transport encryption is already an expectation for all networking.

- Signal: E2EE

- Telegram: by default, nah

- Discord, nah

j4hdufd8•4h ago

Can you elaborate where you think it stops being encrypted?

richwater•4h ago

> All messages are end-to-end encrypted and go straight from your device to the network of choice – never touching our servers.

Just because the messages themselves aren't proxied doesn't mean a service can't steal the content on the end device. I'm obviously not saying you _are_ doing that, but the trust issue is my biggest issue here.

giancarlostoro•4h ago

Looks neat, I'm a little concerned about your iMessage support, is this even allowed by Apple? You might find some resistance on that front.

j4hdufd8•4h ago

Resistance is futile

threatofrain•4h ago

Google only login :(.

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

We're working on it

numbers•4h ago

if you can make the UI/UX of this better than messages, whatsapps, etc combined, then I'd be willing to pay money for it.

DmitryDolgopolo•4h ago

Would love to hear your thoughts on the app! Feel free to reach out to me directly if you encounter any issues. dima@perillalabs.com

whilenot-dev•4h ago

Is your AI implementation on device only or is it making use of a 3rd party service (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google etc.)?

DmitryDolgopolo•3h ago

We use OpenAI models, and the data is never stored on our servers. The features are, however, fully optional.

whilenot-dev•3h ago

This does conflict with the premise "All messages are end-to-end encrypted and go straight from your device to the network of choice".

DmitryDolgopolo•3h ago

All AI features are _optional_. :)

ohcmon•3h ago

This is super cool, but unfortunately has to be open source and with signed reproducible builds.

starik36•3h ago

How are you supporting iMessage? What method?

kylecordes•3h ago

These tools always fall short, not because the teams making them are bad, but because the underlying chat tools they build on are adversarial to the idea of a third-party UI replacing their UI. A new entrant might escape their ire for a while, of course.

saulpw•3h ago

Mac only.

DmitryDolgopolo•3h ago

Working on it

dotancohen•3h ago

I'm most interested in the CRM. I'm a Linux and Android user, so there's currently nothing for me to try, but a page dedicated to the CRM features might get my email address on your mailing list.

Good luck!

DmitryDolgopolo•3h ago

Thanks for the feedback

Imustaskforhelp•3h ago

I think beeper does have folders right?

Also the fact is that I don't need AI included into this software.

Its nice that it never touches your server but beeper is also moving forward in that direction and beeper is also open source and uses the matrix protocol so you can actually be free to use any matrix clients.

What about yours? As someone who uses beeper for talking with insta chats with my friends, I have no regrets picking beeper.

emaro•3h ago

I don't think Beeper is Open Source. They published some of their bridges, but the client is closed source afaik.

emaro•3h ago

Cool, I like to see more innovation in this space.

You obviously have different needs than what Beeper provides, but claiming it's better when you only support a fraction of the networks is a bit steep imo.

Curious what other networks you plan to support and what are your monetization plans?

I really like the addition of folders and CRM features compared to Beeper.

The networks I'm interested in are Telegram (you already got that), Signal, Instagram, Matrix, Threema, Slack and Teams (in that order).

mathiaspoint•3h ago

>Personal CRM

Interesting to hear I'm not the only one who's found the need to write something like this.

Lalabadie•2h ago

It's a market! Kindest seems to have staying power: https://www.kindestapp.com

I first thought to share Clay (https://clay.earth) but I see they were acquired by Automattic recently.

Multicomp•5m ago

Monica CRM is one too, it sits abandoned on my still powered on raspi zero w because I don't have a queue habit set up to cause me to go check it, but it was nice as a digital personal Rolodex with more automation than just contacts app that's barely more than a vcard

sjdrc•2h ago

You write all messages multiple times, them clarify it's only 3 services. Stop that. If it doesn't support everything mainstream, don't claim "all".

pbiggar•2h ago

Would love you to add Signal, as well as DMs in Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn.

Abidrahman435•2h ago

I’ve been testing casino apps in Pakistan, and most fail at reliable withdrawals. One exception I found is linked in my post above.

thedumbname•2h ago

Light mode and Apple font please

hmokiguess•2h ago

Are there any open source clients for this out there? Also, if someone were to build that, what are the protocols one would even use to get these things talking to each other and reconciling the different accounts quirks

Jonovono•2h ago

I think most of these are built using Matrix: https://matrix.org. They have connections with most providers like iMessage, FB, Instagram, etc

swyx•1h ago

ok is there an "open source beeper" that has emerged that i can play with? cant use amber because closed source

tulir•37m ago

The bridges made for Beeper are all open source (https://github.com/mautrix/), so you can set up your own Matrix server with bridges and use any open source Matrix client (https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/).

Besides Beeper, the only consumer bridge hosting service I'm aware of is Element One, but it's only barely maintained, so I'd definitely recommend self-hosting over that.

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What Every Data Scientist Should Know About Graph Transformers

Show HN: Amber – better Beeper, a modern all-in-one messenger

Comments