Everyone's talking about the fediverse using ActivityPub, creating
discord servers and using other services.

It seems like XMPP (the protocol formerly known as Jabber) is starting
to get attention again. I liked Jabber, we used it for internal comms
back in the 2000s. It's TLS-friendly, supports groups and file
transfers, and ties into *nix security (or not, if you want to run it as
a standalone...)

My web host used to provide XMPP servers, then they got rid of it bug grandfathered it in. If you had it, it ran, but you couldn't administer
it. Now, it's finally gone.

It seems like a nice, lightweight app that would fit in with tildes and
small groups while still allowing federation with other sites.



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Re: What about XMPP?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Tue Feb 17 2026 06:55 am

Everyone's talking about the fediverse using ActivityPub, creating discord servers and using other services.

Heh, I thought the discourse at the moment was moving away from discord due to their new age verification processes and their ties to... Palantir, is it? Regardless, some aren't happy and are looking to find alternatives.

It seems like XMPP (the protocol formerly known as Jabber) is starting to get attention again. I liked Jabber, we used it for internal comms back in the 2000s. It's TLS-friendly, supports groups and file transfers, and ties into *nix security (or not, if you want to run it as a standalone...)

I'm very glad that it never went away - but the thought that it would have or even possibly did showed what I've come to better understand lately - that XMPP is all over the place, we just don't realise it. Companies have based their chat products on XMPP for seemingly forever, and XMPP being eXtensible, it's apparently embedded in all sorts of things.

I've dragged my immediate family through xmpp, snikket (xmpp but was supposed to be 'slick'), Matrix, Delta, and am now just about entirely back to XMPP. It's driven my wife a little nuts, so have really been taking my time going back to XMPP.

The thing is - a few XMPP apps have really got better over the past several years, including newcomers like Cheogram. Monal on IOS seems to be pretty solid. Desktop apps are probably the weakest clients at the moment, but hopefully XMPP does have a bit of resurgence and some funding gets made available for groups to really push forward with.

Most of these apps do opportunistic encryption on 1:1 chats automatically, so E2E is there, though if that's one's only or biggest concern, one either pays strict attention to that or uses something like Matrix. (On this note, it's astounding in the present day there's so many Signal cheerleaders - Signal requires your phone # and is centralized US tech. Not recommendable.)

XMPP being everywhere is interesting - apparently Matrix is or was using jitsi as a tie-in for video chat... and jitsi's back-end is... XMPP. I recently discovered XMPP is built-in to Homeassistant, so getting notifications or other messages out of HA was trivial to get going.

It seems like a nice, lightweight app that would fit in with tildes and small groups while still allowing federation with other sites.

I had prosody running on a home server due to a jitsi install, so that's what I built upon to get things rolling for a family chat system again, and it's been great. Lightweight and capable.
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On 17 Feb 2026, The Wanderer said the following...

Re: What about XMPP?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Tue Feb 17 2026 06:55 am

Everyone's talking about the fediverse using ActivityPub, creating di servers and using other services.

Heh, I thought the discourse at the moment was moving away from discord due to their new age verification processes and their ties to...
Palantir, is it? Regardless, some aren't happy and are looking to find alternatives.

I have thought about running an XMPP server a few times, but I cannot see what benefit that would have for me/us since we already have a Matrix homeserver that we all can use, I know a couple of people who use XMPP and I have (or had) an account on one of their servers, but I was looking at it with Matrix tinted glasses and couldn't ever see why I should invest time with it over Matrix.

It seems like XMPP (the protocol formerly known as Jabber) is startin get attention again. I liked Jabber, we used it for internal comms ba the 2000s. It's TLS-friendly, supports groups and file transfers, and into *nix security (or not, if you want to run it as a standalone...)

I'm very glad that it never went away - but the thought that it would
have or even possibly did showed what I've come to better understand lately - that XMPP is all over the place, we just don't realise it. Companies have based their chat products on XMPP for seemingly forever, and XMPP being eXtensible, it's apparently embedded in all sorts of things.

I've dragged my immediate family through xmpp, snikket (xmpp but was supposed to be 'slick'), Matrix, Delta, and am now just about entirely back to XMPP. It's driven my wife a little nuts, so have really been taking my time going back to XMPP.

What made you decide to head back to XMPP after using all those other platforms? I like Delta but don't have a regular need for it, just every now and then I will message the one contact I have that uses it... Matrix is where I settled after ditching Discord way back in like 2019 - I still have a Discord account, but hardly ever log into it now.

The thing is - a few XMPP apps have really got better over the past several years, including newcomers like Cheogram. Monal on IOS seems to
be pretty solid. Desktop apps are probably the weakest clients at the moment, but hopefully XMPP does have a bit of resurgence and some
funding gets made available for groups to really push forward with.

Most of these apps do opportunistic encryption on 1:1 chats
automatically, so E2E is there, though if that's one's only or biggest concern, one either pays strict attention to that or uses something like Matrix. (On this note, it's astounding in the present day there's so
many Signal cheerleaders - Signal requires your phone # and is
centralized US tech. Not recommendable.)

Signal doesn't require a cell # these days does it? I thought it was now able to use just a username? It is a shame about centralised systems tho, perhaps someone can reverse engineer the server and we can start federating our own :P

XMPP being everywhere is interesting - apparently Matrix is or was using jitsi as a tie-in for video chat... and jitsi's back-end is... XMPP. I recently discovered XMPP is built-in to Homeassistant, so getting notifications or other messages out of HA was trivial to get going.

Jitsi is still used as the video backend I think, at least, it is on my homeserver. Maybe they're working to move away from it?

It seems like a nice, lightweight app that would fit in with tildes a small groups while still allowing federation with other sites.

I had prosody running on a home server due to a jitsi install, so that's what I built upon to get things rolling for a family chat system again, and it's been great. Lightweight and capable.

I like Jitsi, in fact it's the only way I can do screenshares for work lol, Teams (either web browser version or app (which is still a web app)) doesn't work for screensharing on my system for whatever reason lol. Jitsi is the only thing that does, well Discord does but as mentioned earlier I don't use that anymore... and that wouldn't roll well for work anyway hahaha.

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The Wanderer wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

XMPP being everywhere is interesting - apparently Matrix is or was
using jitsi as a tie-in for video chat... and jitsi's back-end is...
XMPP.

I did not know that!



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Re: Re: What about XMPP?
By: MeaTLoTioN to The Wanderer on Wed Feb 18 2026 02:39 pm

I have thought about running an XMPP server a few times, but I cannot see what benefit that would have for me/us since we already have a Matrix

It would be debateable whether there'd be any real reason for you to move if you're happy with how your Matrix setup works.

Really, I think you'd only be able to determine that if you setup an XMPP server for fun and testing only, played around with the backend and a client or two, and then measured all the things that might matter to you and yours. We could yak about XMPP being mature, being an actual RFC, being more lightweight, etc., but... to many these things alone would be 'who cares'? heh...

For me, element for awhile got worrisomely bad and wouldn't notify consistently. I don't recall exactly, but we went through the Riot -> Element transition and there were some headaches at the time.

What made you decide to head back to XMPP after using all those other

Sort of "everything" I covered - and a good portion of the current push is that I'm disgruntled with Delta. Delta sold me on it being a messenger that didn't really require a back-end, because standard email servers would do. As soon as I got it production, they changed their mantra and are pushing chatmail as the only thing and to heck with your own setups.

Prosody was sitting on my home server, ticking away, year after year, so that the jitsi service could operate, so I decided to look at what the current state of XMPP was and see if I could make use of this service that was already installed to make a kick-butt IM setup. So far, so good.

Signal doesn't require a cell # these days does it? I thought it was now

Signal will apparently always require a phone #, according to them. The username allows you to hide away your phone # from others, but it's still required to run the thing.

Jitsi is still used as the video backend I think, at least, it is on my homeserver. Maybe they're working to move away from it?

I believe they're working on their own - Element Call.

I like Jitsi, in fact it's the only way I can do screenshares for work

Thanks to virtualhosting, you can expand out the prosody server used in the jitsi setup to do a full-blown xmpp server. That's what I did with mine, anyway.
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Re: Re: What about XMPP?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to The Wanderer on Wed Feb 18 2026 07:50 am

jitsi as a tie-in for video chat... and jitsi's back-end is... XMPP.

I did not know that!

It's probably the only reason I am playing with XMPP as much as I am again - it was there and can be virtualhosted out, so away I went, without breaking jitsi.
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