When trying to switch to UT, one of the blockers for most people could be the messenger apps, especially WhatsApp.
I personally will be unable to pass on WhatsApp, since I have too many contacts there, who are not willing to use other messengers. In addition, basically every organization of group events (birthdays, vacations, etc.) takes place in WhatsApp groups.
This forces me to keep on using WhatsApp, although I would like to replace it.
Now when making the switch to UT, this would mean I will need some sort of replacement, or ways to access my WhatsApp chats by other means.
Currently, I am aware of 3 possible solutions:
- Use WhatsApp web
- Use waydroid + WhatsApp native
- Use some sort of bridging (e.g. matrix)
I have tried all 3 of them, and found that all 3 of them are sub-par, and rather a pain to use than good.
-
WhatsApp web is slow, not a real app, and not feature-complete.
-
Waydroid can't be kept running 24/7 since it consumes too much battery. Also, its not (yet?) very well integrated, means you will always have a full android window.
-
Matrix bridge works in a way, I have this running on a private home server for over a year. While it suddenly stopped syncing (for no obvious reason) during several months, and suddenly continued to sync (for no obvious reason), it basically allows me to chat with WhatsApp contacts using a matrix messenger (currently using Cinny). However, it has a whole bunch of disadvantages; matrix + bridge setup is overly complex, their documentation is severly lacking/incomplete as well as confusing, matrix will update year-old chats every now and then with some meaningless events ("Your security code with XXX changed"), audio-messages don't work at all.
So the question is, what is your solution for using WhatsApp on UT, and how happy are you with your solution?
(And please, for the love of god, don't spam this topic with "Just don't use WhatsApp" and the likes).
One thing that actually came to my mind recently was about the recently introduced European Union guideline for big messengers to force them to provide interoperability between messengers. E.g. WhatsApp must connect to Telegram, to allow WhatsApp chats within Telegram and vice versa.
Would this be a potential approach which was viable for UT also? So imagine we had an official UT messenger, and we could integrate with WhatsApp directly, this means we would have a native WhatsApp client? What you guys think about this?