Chat software

[LarrySwinger]

It's nice to have a chat room for the Cassandra team. We had Session, but Jason and I both weren't content about it. I want to reboot it with different software. I also want to create a chatroom to accompany this forum, which will be public. For the sake of simplicity, let's use the same software for both chat rooms. The point of this thread is to list the various options.

I'm looking for something that's private (E2EE), anonymous (no phone number or email address required), accessible (a web client, or an app that doesn't require registration), reliable, and pretty. By the latter, I don't mean flashy like all these modern interfaces, but actually something with a simple, compact design that gives you a good overview of the chat and doesn't hijack your attention. Think IRC or XMPP. (The latter is actually a candidate; IRC isn't because it doesn't come with E2EE by default.)

[LarrySwinger]

A quick list of options, without actual reviews:

• A Ricochet fork such as Ricochet Refresh or Cwtch
• Tox
• RetroShare
• Matrix
• DarkMX
• SimpleX
• Session
• XMPP (clients include Pidgin with OTR, as well as Jitsi)
• Briar
• A random IRC-like project that includes E2EE by default
• Cabal
• Berty
• Cyph