Usually when alternatives for messaging apps are recommended it’s Signal, Threema or Element but all of them still seem to have small inconveniences (Signal is American, Threema isn’t free and Element just seems too complicated).
Today I stumbled upon Delta Chat for the first time and it seems to be the ideal solution. It’s european, free, open-source, decentralised, usable on almost any device and privacy focused. But the fact that I’ve never heard about it before makes me hesitant.
Has anyone of you used it and can share their experience?
Edit: Here’s a link to their official website: https://delta.chat/en/
I have but that was many years ago and is probably not reflective of the current state.
One thing that probaly stayed the same tho is that its worth using a dedicated email account for it to make things less chaotic. (They have a list of good providers) As long as the other person also uses a client that supports autocrypt (like thunderbird, k9, etc) it works seamlessly. If not it defaults back to unencrypted email iirc. You can export your keys if you move devices and you can import existing gpg keys if you have any.
One drawback used to be multi client support, but i think that might be solved, maybe read their FAQ on that.
I am fairly certain you do not need to provide an email address. It creates one for you automatically. At least that is how ArcaneChat (a fork of DeltaChat) works.
ArcaneChat also supports multile profiles and it looks like thay feature has made its way into Delta now.
It would be odd and mean that its not well decentralized if the account gets automatically created on a default server. Unless they randomize which provider gets used.
It had been so long since I created a profile i decided to go through the steps again. There is a button to choose anoter relay.
And here is a lis https://chatmail.at/relays
It looks like DeltaChat is a differemt email domain than Arcane. I am not sure if Delta has multiple or if it always the same one though. I do believ you can bring your own email. It just is nice that it does this in my case to onboard less tech savvy family and friends.