What app you americans use for personal conversations?

I am German and use Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Threema and SMS because NO ONE CAN MAKE UP THEIR FUCKING MINDS!!!1!!11!
Some people seem to be extra confusing and contact me on multiple channels based on the moon cycle or whatever the fuck.
- the worst part is when they start calling 🙄
- based on the moon cycle
  Lol, right? Wtf?
- I have a friend with multiple active numbers. Very fun to figure out.
- 10000000% this ... Like I just wish everyone used Telegram for IRL chat. Matrix and Discord is fine, there is even a bridge server you can run, so everyone can chat ala IRC. (We run one, it's great).

SMS/RCS or iMessage if you're asking what most people use.

Signal does end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice, and video chat.

As an American living in Germany, I have:
Signal
Matrix
Discord
Whatsapp
Telegram
SimpleX
SMS via Google Voice for some very stubborn Americans
Everyone I know in Europe uses Signal or Whatsapp, often both. Sometimes when I suggest to Americans who live in the US that they should use one of those, they counter that I should buy an iPhone and use iMessage.
- As a fellow American, fuck iMessage. I wish we were more like Europe in that regard.
  
  I've even seen technically-sophisticated adults exclude people from group conversations for not having iPhones. The resistance to using anything else is weird. I'm even willing to add to the above list if somebody has a different preference that isn't the one thing not everyone can use.
  
  With the Digital Market Act in the EU they’ll soon all be speaking to each other. Vestager is about to tear those messaging monopolies a new asshole!
- Its so weird how standardised the use of Apple Phones is in the US
- How ya liking SimpleX? I'm just rocking Discord, Matrix for internet ppl WhatsApp and Telegram for RL ppl. Used to use Signal, but Telegram replaced it a while back for me. Way better feature set.
  
  SimpleX is interesting. Its complete lack of server-side profiles would be promising if I had something really secret to discuss, but I don't. It doesn't have a way to get timely notifications without keeping the CPU awake and draining the battery, so it's kind of a non-starter for general use.
  What features do you prefer in Telegram? Few people I know use it and I just keep it around as an alternate because why not?
  
  Are you using Telegram for its privacy and E2EE or just for the features. Because Telegram sure is not private nor does it have any E2EE unless you specifically select to be in a "secure chat" with someone.

A vast majority of people I’ve met through work and other social activities simply use the default messaging app on their device.

Signal for the half dozen people I actually give a crap about messaging back and forth with.
SMS for the monthly/yearly exchanges with everyone else.

Here in South Europe people mostly use Viber.
South Europe? In Italy everyone uses WhatsApp
- I was surprised to read that a country in South Europe mainly used Viber. I'm not European but I'm almost definite that WhatsApp has the largest market share for chat apps in all of Europe. Maybe Telegram coming a close second
  
  If you move a bit east of Italy, to that peninsula that should not be named, Viber gets real popular.
- *In Croatia

Signal for everything.
There are a couple people who are too lazy to get Signal, and they got iPhones, so I set up an iMessage server to forward messages to my GrapheneOS phone.
But the communication there is extremely sparse and surface level. It's basically just a touch point. The real conversations all go through Signal.
- Share a bit (or a link) about your iMessage server?
  
  Maybe a good idea for a blog post, but the general gist is this:
  Buy an old/cheap Mac mini
  Set up AirMessage or BlueBubbles (open source)
  Run a command or get an app so keep your Mac mini (or whatever other Apple device you're using) awake 24/7
  The messages will get delivered to your Mac, and then forwarded to your phone via AirMessage or BlueBubbles.

Most people I know use SMS/RCS/iMessage or Discord. My family uses Signal, but I don't know anyone else IRL that has even heard of it. I personally don't like Signal because they don't have some basic features, such as if you get a new phone, you need to export/import all of your old messages manually. If your old phone broke or your traded it in already, tough shit. If you log in on your laptop, afaik, there's no way to get your old messages from your phone. I know these were intentional design decisions to make it as secure as possible, but I would be fine with something being slightly less secure to have these QOL features.
- Always interesting when I hear people's families use something other than the default in the US. What started that? Were your parents always concerned about privacy? Did you somehow convince them to use that app? What about when they text someone who isn't on signal, which is probably 90% of the US? I could get my family to download the app but I feel like it's pointless because no one else uses it so they would just quit.
  
  I've been in the Cyber Security space for a few decades now and have all of my close family on Signal. It's another step in helping them understand what privacy options are out there and how to best protect themselves.
  We've also managed to not have any of the more egregious social media platforms (Meta, X, TikTok, etc...) as well as VPN's on everything and PiHoles at the perimeter.
  It sounds paranoid to most of the other families we know but, to each there own I suppose. And knowing the people in my household stand a chance against the ever persistent push of advertising / privacy invasion is worth sounding like a madman once in a while.
  
  My parents were going out of the country where they wouldn't have cell access, and they just googled what to use. Signal is what came up first in a list they read online. They knew that they didn't like Facebook and wanted to avoid Whatsapp for that reason. After we made a family chat group, it just kind of stuck. If we want to send something to the whole family, we use that group. If we send something directly to each other, we still usually use SMS/RCS/iMessage.
- Signal definitely has some room to improve with regard to backup/sync. It should probably never store your messages on its servers, which is what it would take for you to get your history back if you lose access to all your devices containing it, but it could allow you to keep the full history in sync across multiple devices without compromising its security guarantees.
- Who convinced your family? I tried to do the same with my family and friends to no avail.
  
  My dad, mostly. I just explained it in another comment.

It's chaos. Well, unless you count SMS.
There really isn't a single dominant app/service, though apple and imessages comes close. But, since that's apple only, it doesn't truly dominate in the way whatsapp does in some places.
In my local area (a rural mountain zone in the Southeast), the most common single one is telegram. The only thing that gets close is Facebook messenger, but there was a big push maybe three years ago to get people away from it, and it worked.
County wide, it's still Facebook over telegram, but not by much. Then imessage. You can even rely on apple monkeys using one or both of the others since the county school system sends on both of them as well as via SMS for major events.
My kid and most of the high school kids do discord among themselves, but still use the others away from that.
Tbh, though, I have come to prefer not having a single messaging service be dominant. It was (and still can be) a pain in the ass using multiple apps, but at least you're not totally fucked if you refuse to use whatever else the majority have decided to use because it's easier.
- The only thing that gets close is Facebook messenger, but there was a big push maybe three years ago to get people away from it, and it worked.
  Who led the push?
  
  There was a huge problem with it being over used by the mayor's office as a semi official channel. When the mayor got himself into a bit of trouble, those folks that were working to get him ousted made a big deal out of him corporatizing the office of mayor and town business in that way, and it made sense to use it as a tool against him. He was trying to treat it like if he said something there, it was a done deal, and it counted as some kind of replacement for posting such things publicly.
  The push was from a group of like minded residents that included the county sheriff, the chief of police, myself, and the librarian. I can't truly say anyone led the push, though the librarian would come closest. We all just got sick of him, and used what we could to get people moving against him. People were starting to hate Facebook locally because of some school drama anyway, so it was easy enough to stoke that fire.
  Get people from the various town departments to stop using it, get their families and friends to help convince them if they weren't on board. If he can't reach anyone via messenger that's part of the local government, it cuts that out, and ties him into the whole arguments over school aged access to Facebook in general.
  It worked! Which was a bit of a surprise to all involved. But it was the right confluence of events. He was fucking up with covid issues, fucking up the people that actually run the town on a direct basis, and doing so while being an asshole as a person. There was no way he was winning the next election, but he could fuck things up before then.
  Once the entire police force officially abandoned messenger, it was a bit of a death knell. Individual officers still used it, but the group chats he was using died totally.
  Small town drama, in other words.
- Damn this madness, it's much better when there is only one giant megacorp like with everything else!

A combination. For the tech challenged, SMS. For those a little bit tech friendly, Telegram or Signal.
- Similar

Canada's pretty close to America, so I'll answer. My family uses WhatsApp. Better than unencrypted, at least.
You're not going to get a very representative sample here. Signal is great but a lot of North Americans haven't even heard of it.
- We love our 51st state in the north ;)
  
  Thank you, and fuck you too.
  Like, you're not wrong, but in case it wasn't intended telling someone their country isn't real is generally considered an insult.
- Damn. Here in Quebec pretty much everyone seems to default to FB Messenger.
  
  I'm pretty curious to know what got a bunch of prairie farmers on WhatsApp, but I suspect it leads back to India fairly quickly. Unfortunately, French-speaking Indians are a rare breed.

Here in NL it's pretty much 100% Whatsapp, from family, friends and colleagues.
- Same in germany. Some people that care a little about security might use Telegram, Signal and/or Threema, but most still use WhatsApp parallel for family and stuff
  
  I would say Telegram is less secure than Whatsapp because the messages are not end to end encrypted, when I last checked.

SMS/RCS for friends/family in meatspace, Discord for friends in cyberspace.
Snapchat still seems to be a default conduit of communication for my family members and their respective friends. I do not have Snapchat and never will. They are mildly annoyed at my stubbornness.
I have yet to meet a single soul in my local circles who is willing to install any messaging platform over any concern of privacy or security. These are very simply not important factors to any of them. It's upsetting. But, y'know, lead a horse to water, etc.
Discord continues to be a choice platform for my online friends circle. I don't know so much about any of them, but I almost never use it for 1:1 private messaging. It's there for the rare aside conversation. But its primary form of use for me is as a big town square in servers with dozens of people. It's essentially my version of going to the mall after school or to the local pub after work.

sms and discord

SMS text messaging unless it's a group chat/voice call for gaming, in which case it's Discord.
- Really? People pay for short, unencrypted messages that can barely handle accented characters, let alone media, when there are free alternatives that are much better in the vast majority of scenarios?
  Or is free sms a common thing in people's phone plans?
  
  Pay? In the US we haven't paid extra for SMS since about 2005. Which partly explains why it's prevalent.
  
  Almost all phone plans have unlimited texting. Or at least it seems that way.
  
  My plan is $25/month for unlimited talk, text, and 5g data.
  
  I've had unlimited sms since before I had a smart phone.
  
  Pay per text plans only seemed to exist up until like 2010 at the latest.
  
  The problem in the US is that the iPhone has a huge amount of the market and iMessage mostly does that already. For Android to counter that you have to use a 3rd party app, which further fractures an already smaller market. Or everyone could just use sms which is free with basically every plan nowadays, which gets you by.
  
  Like others have commented, unlimited texting has been available in most phone plans for the better part of a decade now; I'd struggle to name a place that offers plans without it.
  As for the accented characters, that's something I personally don't encounter much as a native English speaker. I obviously can't speak for those who do need those keyboards, but for me it's not a problem.
  With regards to encryption/privacy, I can't say that's a concern I've personally had regarding my texts. Could the government read my messages? Probably, but all they're getting is cute cat pics and random chatter about games and food and whatnot. Again, that's another aspect that's probably more of a concern for people in more sensitive situations, but I can't speak for them.
  
  Well most messages can be understood without accented characters and SMS is dependable to work on all devices.

No we absolutely do not!
- Literally nobody I know uses Viber. WTF is OP on about?
- Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, USA, and Philippines. Interesting.

Mostly SMS, but I have one friend who uses Whatsapp. I have Signal installed but wasn't able to convince anyone else to switch.

SMS. Universal and ubiquitous thanks to free or nearly free inclusion in phone plans. American English has no need for expanded character sets and carriers/Apple/Google have added just enough features on top that the vast majority of people aren't left wanting for more.
Instant payment was literally impossible until this summer, and given it's so new almost no bank has support for it yet. Privacy/encryption don't enter into most people's consciousness.
- They might mean instant bank transfers, like OSKO in Australia. Google tells me a service called FedNow is available through 35 banks as of July this year which supports instant bank transfers.
- SMS was ubiquitous here in NA while data was already ubiquitous but SMS heavily metered in most of the rest of the world.

So I'm actually an immigrant (Indian) but I came over super young so I guess it counts. WhatsApp with family, normal SMS for everything else. If I could, I would use Signal for everything but it's kind of hard to get your massive Indian family to all switch from something they've used for a decade and a half.

Signal for anyone I could get on Signal.
But sms/RCS for random people I exchange numbers with.

- This is probably funny since OP said southern Europe. If it was eastern that would be very old I'm sure.
- thanks, mmababes

- You should also put your efforts towards getting apple on RCS. Then you wouldn't need to have multiple apps.
- How do you convince them to use Signal? I would like to use your tactics
  
  Hey Bob, I got these photos I should send you, do you have signal? No, you really should, end to end encryption is a basic human right. Here hand me your phone I'll help you set it up. Hey look at that you got a bunch of people already using signal. All right here are the photos I promised you.
  
  I have some fruit booter friends. I peer pressured then into signal the same way other people peer pressuresd them into buying an iPhone.
  I think it's pretty poetic.

sms
I have family who use facebook messenger but I refuse.

Discord, Telegram, SMS
I keep wanting to like Signal but the fact that they refuse to allow multi-device use kills it for me. I can go for days at a time never checking my phone, every app I use also delivers messages to my tablet.
- Signal allows you to use the desktop client for multi-device use
  
  Yeah, but it sucks lol

Discord for friends, SMS for everyone else. Rather use something private but I can't convince people to care.

Discord/SMS/Instagram/Telegram/Matrix for text.
Discord/Skype for video.

Facebook Messenger. I'm from Australia (but currently living in the USA) and Facebook Messenger is by far the most common messaging app in Australia. MSN Messenger used to be #1, then it was briefly Google Talk after MSN shut down, and now it's been Messenger for a long time.

I just use SMS. I don't need to install anything extra or make some sort of extra account somewhere. Phone plans here have had unlimited texts for like over a decade now so we aren't spending extra money here to send texts either.
- SMS is notoriously unreliable, plus insecure as hell.
  As in it's known across the industry that upward of 10% of messages fail, and since SMS lacks error detection (and thereby no error correction), you have no idea when your message never arrived.
  
  We have read reciepts, granted idk how those work all together

Whatsapp because I can't get anyone to flip

Germany: Only aware of WhatsApp but I don't chat much...
Personally online: Discord

Discord and SMS.

I can't get my slavic grannies and aunties off of Viber either 😂
- me neither

Viber. Brings back memories.

Mix of messenger, telegram, and SMS for me.

Signal

I do cybersecurity and programming, so, stereotypically, Discord. It's more widespread than Matrix, and it's natively and easily cross-platform unlike iMessage, SMS, Telegram, or Signal.
- I'd love to love Discord, but frankly it's one of the most convoluted, obtuse interfaces I've ever seen. And I wrote my first program in Fortran on punched cards...
  
  True. It feels fine to me because I pretty much grew up on it, but introducing people to it is always rough (one friend group is still on Facebook Messenger).

I mostly use Telegram/Signal/Discord, but Snapchat and Insta are very popular here in Canada

SMS/FB Messenger. The only people i message are my parents and in-laws.

Mostly FB Messenger because I can't get my relatives to use anything else :/

Signal for family, Discord for friends.

iMessage/SMS and Messenger are what most of my friends use. Although I know people who use Snapchat at work. I don’t anyone who uses Telegram or Signal.

estonia here: most people use Facebook messager, whatsapp, sms, viber, Skype and snapchat

IRC.
Doesn't everyone?
- I wish
  That or matrix though I think matrix will bridge with irc fairly cleanly

Telegram

SMS Facebook Messenger Google Chat Discord
There was an attempt for one friend group to go to Signal, but not enough people wanted to jump ship.

For Filipinos, Messenger is life, it seems.
Me and my friends prefer Instagram, Discord or WhatsApp though