what are your recommendations for a good privacy friendly sms app?
Hello, currently I use qksms but its very problematic and lacks basic fetures. One of those issues being you cant send videos, and sending and recieving media is pixalated or blurry because of a commpresion issue. I've already tried adjusting the compresion options in settings to find out it doesn't work.
If they won't change to something better like SimpleX then you could use https://github.com/wrwrabbit/Partisan-SMS . It is a fork of qksms that adds privacy, it will do nothing for video quality or anything else though.
Yeah, qksms's handling of group messages is really klunky, too.
Deku SMS looks nice, but it doesn't understand group SNS at all. Neither does Connect You (it also doesn't have search-by-name for texts, and has trouble linking contacts to texts). Simple SMS is now verboten.
Despite warts, I'm stuck with qksms as well.
Edit Fossify Messages has been released on fdroid. It supports groups, looks nice, and is working for me so far!
Since SMS is already sent in the clear, I actually use Google Messages. For those who also have it, it upgrades the SMS to RCS with end-to-end encryption. Sure, it's nowhere near as good as Signal (which OP says these people won't use), but it's better than plain-text SMS.
Simple SMS, obtained from F-Droid, is probably the best universal option until the Fossify project adds the fork to their suite (assuming they do).
If you have the ability to toggle network access for your apps (GrapheneOS, etc.), Google Messages is a very solid SMS app that receives regular updates. I would normally only recommend FOSS apps, but many of those options are limited and/or dangerously outdated for SMS.
i would recommend the use of SimpleSMS but install it on fdroid instead of the playstore, the simpletools collection was bought by a privacy-unfriendly company