Beeper Mini, entangled in a prolonged saga of attempting to bring iMessage to Android users, has encountered another hurdle. The standalone Beeper Mini app, designed to enable iMessage texting on Android phones, has reportedly been removed from the Google Play Store. This development follows the Beeper team’s recent announcement that the app received its final update, signaling a reluctance to persist in the battle to make iMessages consistently functional on Android devices.
According to a report from 9to5Google, the Beeper Mini app, which facilitated blue bubbles iMessage texting on Android, is no longer available on the Play Store. The Beeper team officially communicated this decision to Beeper Cloud users on Thursday.
The iMessage feature from Beeper Mini hasn’t vanished completely; instead, it has been relocated to the ‘Labs’ section within the Beeper Cloud app. The message to Beeper Cloud users stated, “We have moved iMessage to ‘Labs’ in Beeper Cloud and removed Beeper Mini from the Play Store.” Although the Beeper Mini app is no longer accessible through Google’s storefront, users can still sideload it using the apk file from the Beeper website. Notably, Beeper Cloud remains available on the Play Store.
Eric Migicovsky, Beeper’s co-founder, provided additional updates on the company’s roadmap in the announcement. The company is actively working on incorporating 14 other chat networks into the Beeper Mini Android app, emphasizing it as their top priority. The message highlighted that the new app boasts a fresh design, tailored for optimal speed and performance. Furthermore, the company revealed upcoming improvements to the Beeper desktop app, promising enhanced performance.
In the previous month, Beeper declared a final update for the Mini app on its blog, acknowledging the “unsustainability” of its efforts to ensure stable iMessage functionality on Android phones. The company expressed its inability to continue issuing fixes if Apple were to disrupt the service, citing the difficulty of challenging the largest company on Earth in a “cat-and-mouse game.”
Apple, consistently thwarting Beeper’s attempts to run iMessage on Android, has argued that the Beeper Mini app poses “significant risks to user security and privacy.” In contrast, Beeper denies these claims, accusing Apple of monopolizing the iMessage service to promote iPhone sales.