Monal - XMPP Chat Recenzje App

It keeps getting better! The new intro / settings pages look great!

Works well.

There seems to be an issue with the app’s sound settings. On the iPhone 15 Pro Max, incoming messages fail to trigger notification sounds!

This app is the most feature filled XMPP client for iOS. I’ve tried almost all of them and Monal is a cut above the rest. It certainly deserves more 5-star reviews which is why I am penning this one. Aside from one minor glitch, the app is stable , well integrated into the iOS ecosystem ie can share/send image files etc - it is a highly capable app and highly recommended.

It seems to me Monal has come a long way since release. Some devs just release their app and never work on it again - but not Monal! The Monal devs are reasonably active with maintenance & bugfixes. They’ve put together a very useful, feature-rich, easy-to-use XMPP client while keeping a minimalist feel. Monal crashes occasionally, but not so much as to impede my usecase. I just close/reopen the app, or ignore the crash warning, and pick up where I left off. (To devs: I’ll have to remember to send you the crash report next time. I think I tried once and it said my phone wasn’t set up to send emails? I dunno. I’ll try.) Overall, the app works great and has all the necessities. Works flawlessly with my cheap low-end VPS running ejabberd. Calls connect fast, voice is clear, no lag. OMEMO works; but I did have some issues with it early on where my recipient couldn’t read msgs (or vice versa) even though we had confirmed each other’s keys. To be fair this could have also been a user error. This was eventually resolved. I would like to see additional privacy options. OMEMO is fine. I would like to see PGP implemented (for example, I believe the Linux XMPP client “Dino” has the ability to use PGP as well as OMEMO) Perhaps even encrypted voice calls (assuming they are not already encrypted)

I can't login to my works xmpp server. Doesn't matter what I try or what they do. This doesn't work.

Use jabber? Have iOS? Use monal p e r i o d. Recent iOS versions probably work extremely well. iOS: 16 does have a couple quirks, I think. Haven't zeroed it in. yet. Devs: I know I am using an ancient iOS version but my contacts and I have extreme trouble getting video calls to connect sometimes and they will drop randomly. It's likely a network issue, but we notice that if we use wired or no headsets, symptoms seem to subside and dissappear or, at very least, seem to help with initial connection speed and success rate. Not sure if we will ever upgrade from 16. not a big deal.

Wow Monal for iOS has come a long way. Years ago it wasn’t my first choice. Neither were there any viable alternatives to be honest. Monal 6.4.0 performs really well for me. Kudos! Obviously apple being apple I don’t get notifications if I didn’t touch the app for a while. This is something all third party apps have to contend with on iOS.

Why not adding OTR feature which already exists in Chat Secure app; This will make this app work more efficiently with other xmpp clients on other OS’s

This is in no way functionally comparable to Conversations on android but having tried ALL the recently updated xmpp text apps on iOS this is by far the best option Using the Conversations server as sender and recipient often there are huge delays for iOS clients on WiFi and Verizon 5G. Don’t give up on us.

I had a mistaken view that there were no good XMPP options on iOS. Perhaps that was true before, but now it’s false. Additionally, the XMPP standards have added a lot of things to make the protocol very usable on mobile devices. Monal is good, usable, and actively developed. There are some minor UI issues but they are fixable, and a small trade off for a communications channel you actually have control over. This is one app I’ll be pushing my friends to use. Monal is open source which means you can have confidence that it can continue being updated for many years. I would consider this a significant strength for any software, but even more so on iOS which breaks apps once they are too old (guessing half of the iOS apps I’ve paid for don’t work/can’t be install anymore?)

UPDATE: Thank you for your reply. I guess my feature request is for Monal to be allowed to accept self-signed certificates. (Host has non globally routable IP.) My XMPP host won’t let Monal connect because it’s using an obsolete encryption protocol. I see in prosody logs other clients connecting with TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 but when Monal tries to connect it’s rejected. Log message: “Client disconnected: sslv3 alert bad certificate.” This app looks great and I want to try it and recommend it, so hopefully this is just a minor bump in the road.

This app automatically creates a file folder in the phone, this might leads to leakage of files shared in conversations when phones are compromised or inspected by government authorities

Have been using the beta version of the app. I give the app 5 stars, because its a solid app for iPhone. Very dependable. Messages deliver as expected! I do have one recommendation, This being a mobile app, network connectivity is expected to be unstable. It is not necessary to notify the client of sync issues as a notification. I hope the developer considers this annoyance and enables the user to disable this notification by default.

I configured this program to connect to my XMPP server. It sends the messages and the other party receives them. But there are two basic issues. First, when I start to compose a reply message, the keyboard opens and covers up the message I was replying to. Second, you can't copy the text of the messages you receive to your clipboard. These UI glitches are the reason for my rating.

UI is very beautiful, but the client is in the background, after repeated entry, there will be ghosting, more affect my feelings about him, I like him very much, but this bug affects his beauty too much

This app has a nice interface, but when you try to use encryption, it says that the other user is to blame because his device doesn’t support it. This is nonsense! Everybody gets this messages far as I can tell.

I'm having problems with flashing and crashing, after sending a message at one point, monal flashed and when I opened it again nothing was displayed and it also flashed immediately. After repeating it many times I had to delete and reinstall it, now it is working fine, but I would like to know why it crashes. Overall monal is still a good XMPP client for iOS, although it still has some minor issues

A loved function, making phone calls, seems to be broken on my iPhone and on my friends’ devices when using Monal. When pressing the call button, the calling screen appears zoomed in way to large, so no buttons or status can be seen, only the left half pf the account’s profile photo. Please fix this useful function

Monal is the best app for xmpp I’ve found on App Store. However, after starting last week I started getting lots of error messages sent to me and other contacts. In the last couple days I’ve gotten over 200, but I didn’t change anything. Mostly they are: There was an error decrypting this encrypted message (Signal error). To resolve this, try sending an encrypted message to this person. (Error Domain=org.whispersystems.SignalProtocol Code=3 "Duplicate Message" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Duplicate Message}) I’ve tried every option suggested online but can’t figure out how to fix it. Send an w cry message back just causes more messages to come. I cant figure out how to send a message to you directly, so I’m trying here. Please help!!

I’ve tried several xmpp apps, and so far Monal has given me the least issues. However, something that really bugs me is that you have to individually delete every single message, because there is no option to clear all messages or even delete a chat. Also, every time I delete a message it sends a spam message to the other user, such as “there was an error decrypting this encrypted message”. Quite annoying.

I deleted the app because I couldn’t find a delete conversations button. No point in secure messaging without being able to have disappearing messages or deleting conversations

Monal is the best xmpp client for iOS by a fairly substantial margin. Unfortunately it’s still a little rough around the edges, but omemo mostly works now, and finally notifications mostly work. It looks like MUCs are starting to work now, however this currently results in a lot of notification spam with no way to mute channels. It’s still very difficult to recommend xmpp for people on iOS devices, but it is getting better and monal has made some good strides towards this over time. Unfortunately, progress is a little slow… I believe there’s only one person really working on it. Hopefully the new muc stuff gets sorted out and hopefully the app gets a little bit of polish soon! It’s mostly fine… but having used it for a few years it still feels fragile to me.

I used to be able to do this and it was very convenient. Now when I press down on the incoming text,nothing happens.

The more this app updates, the worse it seems to get. Years ago, it looked and functioned great. The addition of OMEMO was great in theory but I have never gotten it to function usably with Openfire since the addition. Now, the new “bugfixes” just cause it to crash immediately when it gets the green connection to the server. Ironic when something is better off not being “improved”.

The app used to work for me but now whenever I try to use it, it crashes. I’m using the app with an Openfire server that I connect to using OpenVPN to access the network. The app won’t crash until I connect to the VPN and then it just closes. I found that if I disable the account in the app and then connect to the VPN, the app won’t crash until I re-enable the chat account in the app and then it almost instantly crashes. There is something that the app doesn’t like about OpenVPN for some reason.

Resends messages, takes forever to connect to display new messages even after receiving a push notification... it needs a major overhaul or be removed from the store. You do get push notifications, but no new messages get displayed when you open the app.

I love open source and open platforms (like XMPP), so I really appreciate the effort the developer(s) make in creating this app, but it’s just a terrible experience. Part of the problem may be inherent to limitations in iOS, but after coming from “Conversations” on Android, this app and the state of XMPP on iOS leaves so much to be desired. The biggest issue is that message notifications simply don’t happen (yes, my server supports push). The same server worked beautifully with Conversations, but Monal is simply unusable because notifications just don’t work. The user interface is really wonky and ugly, to be frank. I don’t mean to discourage, and I will continue to update my review as Monal progresses. Thanks again to the developers.

Since the latest update yesterday gives kcf error2 Cannot connect Pleade revert to old version that worked I am running iOS 13.5

Crashes when sending a message, making it unusable. Crashes every time.

This is a great app that’s free & still offers all features . People make apps & sell without any features . High efficiency & Zero complaints . Thanks Developer.

Doesn’t work with spark IM

the server is prosody omemo works perfect on all the clients i use(gajim,conversation legacy) but not at all. impossible to get the omemo key.

MUCs don’t properly create as it throws away the associated account; Adding MUCs have no user feedback; Online users only show up for one of my XMPP accounts; “Quick” adding an account threw out the TLD for some reason. Second time trying it in the hopes there were fewer bugs — and, in its defense, I was able to add my personal account and my business accounts this time, but not with full functionality. Perhaps it also can actually maintain push events without silently disconnecting you from your accounts this time around, but it will remain a mystery to me.

just very unreliable

Connects to corporate Xmpp server okay, but I see two MAJOR issues that prevent me from using: 1. The list of online users is not correct. There are users who are online and available, but do not show in the list. Disconnecting and reconnecting does not help. 2. Connection drops after some time with no indication whatsoever. I’ll go back to app and all looks good with the list of users that appear online/away, but the connection has actually dropped and that list means nothing. Have to disconnect and reconnect to get back online. Have not tested the actual ‘chat’ functionality due to the above rendering the app unusable to me. If I can help by providing some kind of log file, please let me know how. iOS is sorely lacking in reliable direct connect xmpp clients and this app shows the most promise.

Monal stands out in a small crowd of XMPP (aka Jabber) clients, taking the high road of “your chats are your business”. As such it fulfills an important niche for privacy minded users, but there are minor quibbles in the version I am using: 1. It clearly supports images in the dev blog and/or documentation, but only text has been seamless with my prosody server. Any time I attempt to send an image in either JPG, PNG, or GIF it complains about an SSL error, but the certificate is correctly signed and the CA issuing it is Lets Encrypt. SSL scorecard places the certificate as A- so I doubt the problem lies there. I suspect I need to have a specially configured web server available for the upload to occur but I can’t find documentation on those potential dependencies. 2. Because there isn’t a user-accessible debugging function client-side, it is difficult for me to determine if the image problem is server side or client side. Prosody in debug mode emits a little bit of useable information (and a lot of noise) but only shows half the story. 3. Trying to examine logs with the More>Chat Logs>(account name)>(date) menu path shows... a black screen. Perhaps a function needs to be enabled server side? Which makes no sense as I can see prior convos in the regular chat thread. Beyond my own personal issues with my setup, it has been a solid client. Just be sure to keep it running in the background, and it will periodically ping your server for new messages; the prosody server log shows reconnect activity about every 30 seconds or so, not too bad a trade off. I was concerned about the impact on my battery by leaving it running, but my last battery report in settings said it only consumed 4% over the course of an 8 hour day, so it’s relatively minimal. The author deserves recognition for achieving this difficult feat. To the author, I encourage you to continue to develop and deploy his client! iOS users deserve to have their privacy, and you are delivering it! Keep up the good work! Update 2018-01-10: I have managed to get images to work as file uploads, but they still do not appear inline. The issue was an additional firewall port that needed to be open. I’ve tried other clients but some were iffy and some just plain creepy (another client appeared to ship off your images to their servers). Monal still remains the best choice with regard to your privacy.

Disconnects frequently, cannot have a two way conversation as some messages are lost.

All the ingredients to make an excellent XMPP app are here. Responsive developer using a peer reviewable open source coding process and licensing. If I had a business, I'd hire this developer to integrate more with other productivity tools and add custom alert sounds.

I use it with OpenFire and it works great!

I've tried many different jabber apps and this one seems to still be the best option. It has tons of bugs and not updated regularly.

Doesn't inform as to why login failed. Doesn't actually join chat rooms (MUCs) for moments to minutes after attempting to do so, and gives no indication as to whether it is even attempting to. Reloads at random, leaving the app in a "not-quite-connected" state, silently failing to send or receive text, while claiming to still be connected. This app is not ready for prime time.

Best IM for xmpp i have tried. But have one major problem: i have more than 1000 contacts and can't see them all... Minor problem: filter please OTR junk messages(like "OTR encrypted, can't decrypt"). If you need beta tester for os x and ios - i am here)) with 1000 contacts, personal ejabberd and all-day xmpp user;)

Probably the best xmpp-client for iOS today. The major caveat with it is that group chats are not rejoined when the app launches even though they're still listed under active chats. Joining a group chat that has an active chat doesn't seem to work at all. There's also a bug initially joining group chats. There's no visual feedback that anything happened when tapping the join button and it doesn't show up under active chats. At some point later it just sort of shows up there, but I haven't yet figured out a reliable set of steps to make them appear.

Tried 3 other jabber clients that didn't let me pick my server. They silently assumed I was using their server, or let me try to use mine and claim I was using the "wrong password". Monal starts by showing the whole app and letting you choose the account settings.

Highly recommended. Ad free, great UI layout, easy to setup. Easily the best iOS (also available on OSX) chat app out there.

App works but...Screenshots are not what the app looks like. The navigation bar is an ugly shade of green and the status bar text is white while the navigation bar text is black. Please make it a unified text color and give user ability to change that navigation bar color.

I am so angry at the App Store app right now because I wrote a super lengthy review and it just threw it away saying the nickname I picked was already taken. Has anyone noticed you can't write a review for it? Hopefully I can remember most of what I wrote. Love this app, because it works, it's free, and all of the other reasons people have listed, like not proxying through some 3rd party, etc. Why does it count up received messages of the current active chat, though? You have to tap to another chat and then back to get rid of the annoying number/red ball. When I tap a notification to get back to the app, it should clear the unread count, but it doesn't. Have to tap another chat and then back. Sometimes the latest chat message is lower down and hidden by the text input box until you tap another chat and back again. The UI (at least on the iPad) could be a little bit more intuitive and solid all around. When you are away from active chats, like on the accounts tab, you want to tap on a contact in the list on the left, but nothing happens. It seems like it should take you to the chat, or just not display the contact list when you are in another tab. An easier way to enable and disable accounts would be nice, for those times when you are at your desktop and don't want your messages coming up in the background anymore. Maybe the enable switch could be right on the account in the list, just like the circle indicating its state. Is it possible to have a choice of sound to use? My notifications make sounds even when I have the volume all the way down to "muted", which could just be an iOS thing. Ability to change colors/theme would also be nice, but more form than function. Like being able to switch from bubble messages to plain lines of text with name/time stamp and differentiating between users by color (or optionally not). Thank you for the functional and free xmpp client that nobody else seems to want to make! :) Your work and efforts are very much appreciated.

Xmpp settings does not work