The best chat apps all have end-to-end encryption enabled by default, or at a stretch, allow you to quickly turn it on. Do you know who can read your SMS messages? Pretty much everyone. Text messaging should be about the person, not the device. We don't want any green bubble/blue bubble drama here.

If, however, you're starting a friend group, desert island colony, or fan club from scratch and you get to pick the tools you use, this is what you should be looking for in messaging apps:Īvailability on both iPhone and Android. The big reason to use any of those apps is that your friends do. Nor did whatever Google is calling its latest messaging foray. Neither iMessage, SMS, nor Android Messages made this list.

So when it came to putting together this list, that freed me up to be pretty strict about the requirements for inclusion. If that's SMS or smoke signals, you have my full permission to use it. I still believe the best texting app is normally the one people will actually reply to you with.

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