14 DAY TRIAL // iMessage continues to be a messaging service exclusively available in the Apple ecosystem despite the efforts of several developers to expand it to Android.
But 16-year-old developer Roman Scott says his app called weMessage and enabling iMessage on Android isn’t doing anything wrong, as it relies on Apple’s services to make the magic happen.
His new app enables iMessage on Android with the help of a Mac system that’s responsible for forwarding the messages to your mobile device. Users need to install a second app called weMessage on their Macs to enable the forwarding.
“The weServer acts as a “bridge” between the Mac computer and your Android device. The weServer is a messaging server that processes and relays iMessages to and from the Android device. The reason why an Apple computer is needed is because the iMessages need to be sent through an Apple device in order to be delivered. The iMessages need to be sent through Apple’s servers, and the only way to do this legitimately is to use an Apple device,” the dev explains.
Now offered free of charge
Originally launched with a $2.99 price tag but now available for free, weMessage comes with the full feature pack included in iMessage, and also includes Do Not Disturb, notifications, contact blocking, and the ability to set group chat icons, a feature missing from Apple’s own service.
As far as security goes, all messages are encrypted using AES cryptography, but it’s worth mentioning that messages are “temporarily uploaded” to Google’s Firebase platform in order to enable notifications. There are options to disable this, but without notifications, a messaging platform doesn’t make much sense.
No personal information is collected, the dev guarantees, and all messages are forwarded to the Android devices, “and not to anywhere else.”
Of course, it’s probably just a matter of time until Apple sends a takedown request for this app, as it happened several times in the past, but in the end, it shows that demand for iMessage on Android still exists and Cupertino has no reason to ignore it.
You can download weMessage for Android right now and hit the play button below to see the app at work.
