this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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What is Snikket?

Snikket is a messaging app with a focus on privacy and ease of use.

To support your privacy, Snikket is fundamentally different to other messaging apps that you may be familiar with.

Most popular messaging apps are developed by large businesses who provide the service for free in exchange for gathering data about you and showing you ads. In addition, all your messages travel through internet servers operated by them.

Instead of a single large corporation controlling everything, Snikket is decentralized. It is built on a network of smaller independent providers. Everybody is able to choose a Snikket provider that they can trust and yet still communicate with anyone else in the network.

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[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 10 points 1 week ago

This is a much appreciated overhaul

[–] TurkeyDurkey@piefed.world 8 points 1 week ago

This is what I needed to see! Tops my amazing day!

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

tbh i prefer the older design. seems like this is based on conversations.im?

[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 12 points 1 week ago

In part. The whole idea behind snikket is to bundle together a bunch of pre-existing mainstream and well behaved XMPP clients and server under one consistent and polished package, so that it just works out of the box for the less savvy users and admins who then don't have to think too much about configuration and peers onboarding. So, yes, on Android, you will find a rebranded version of the Conversations client, prosody on the server, siskin on iOS, and IIRC they are working on a SDK for the desktop.

[–] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I never heard of it. Is it's decentralised setup it's unique feature that makes it different from Signal? Who uses this messenger, with whom for what?

Edit: This is not meant to sound harsh, I'm curious

[–] stratself 6 points 1 week ago

It's basically XMPP with a clear packaging, from server to client

[–] tuxec@infosec.pub 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been using it for more than a year to communicate with my family and a very small group of friends. The video and audio call features are good and I've replaced phone calls and Signal/WhatsApp with it. Because it's XMPP, there are many clients you can use, not just the Snikket app. Overall, I recommend it because of the End2End Encryption features and self-hostable (if that's a term)

[–] WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago

Similar here.

Family is mostly OK on it. We used to have issues with iOS devices not noticing some new messages & calls, but that seems to have stopped a few months ago. Family is usually impatient about me getting to my phone and rings me using 3 different services in a row, one of them Snikket xD

Have not yet managed to get any friends onto it.

[–] dimjim@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I haven't really either, just from browsing their website it seems like a federated service you can either host yourself or join someone else's, and then use their app (or a fork) to invite the people you specifically want to talk to.

I don't know much about XMPP, but that is what it's based on.

[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago

XMPP is what Matrix was meant to be, but 15 years too early

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So it's like matrix?

[–] FlowerFan@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Does it use Omemo 0.8 yet?

or still just 0.3?

[–] Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So, this is yet another messenger that just splits the user base even further, leading to even less people moving away from the WhatsApp? Or did I get it wrong?

[–] tuxec@infosec.pub 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You/users have a choise. Use privacy invasive chat apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, etc for free or invest some time and/or money to self-host it or use their SaaS option. Either way, you're far better than using WhatsApp. Signal is a very good option.

If you "don't care about privacy because if have nothing to hide", I recommend reading Means of Control by Byron Tau or just watch what ICE is doing with all the data Palantir is offering.

[–] Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 1 points 1 week ago

No no, I use Signal and it was difficult enough to get friends and family over. Many didn't. But Signal has been the only messenger with enough pull.