How to install XMPP on iPhone via Chat Secure

!! Attention - The XMPP Server You will USe is AntiLockDown.tel not .org !!

ChatSecure is our favorite XMPP messenger client for iPhone, it is the best designed and the most user friendly with a reasonable amount of ongoing development and support. Personally, I would recommend Conversations which can be installed on F-Droid, however, if you only have an iPhone. Also Conversations enables voice calls with ease, whereas ChatSecure is only text and images.

Once you have installed it you'll find it no more difficult to use than WhatsApp or Signal

Step-by-Step Instructions

To make it a little easier, we have put this page together so you can follow the guide in a few steps and have XMPP set up in no time at-all. Like we've previously said, encourage your friends to use this as its a great alternative to most of the privately owned apps and will give you the best freedom and privacy. We have covered this in our Networking Page.

Step One - Install and Open ChatSecure

You can get this by searching ChatSecure in the Apple Store. This link you can click should take you there directly ChatSecure | App Store.

Once ChatSecure is installed you should see something like this when you launch the app:

All you need to do for this step is click on the CREATE NEW ACCOUNT button that I have circled in red.

Step Two - Pick your XMPP provider

You have a few choices here, in this example we will open an account with the AntiLockDown.tel XMPP server. ** XMPP server is completely free!** and we need nothing, no ID, no phone number.

As you can see we have Typed our Nickname of John, (you chose whichever one you want :-). On SERVER in the Custom field we type antilockdown.tel (as we have previously said in our articles, a great thing with XMPP is its federated nature, anyone can talk to anyone on XMPP regardless of who their XMPP profiver is. You may chose whichever one you like and still interact with people in our rooms, it's up to you.

Step Three - Add Further Settings

If not already selected, select Show Advanced Settings and Customize Username. You may choose any username you like that is not taken, if you choose a username that is taken it will ask you to try another. So you just type the username you desire followed by @antilockdown.tel just like in the photo.

Step Four - Passwords

As for the password, you can let ChatSecure Generate a Secure Password or input your own one, in this example we let ChatSecure generate us a password. If you do input your own try and use one which is a decant length, with upper and lower case characters and do make sure you write it down or keep it safe or memorised, if you lose your device, there is no password recovery service.

Also see we have selected Automatically Fetch Media, this is up to you though.

Step Five - You are Finished!

Congratulations, you are now ready to use chat secure.

You can now click on the Tick Icon or check out the Server Information

Extras - Server Information

As you can see from the next two screen shots, if you have clicked the Server Information button, you can see information about the Push Registration, HTTP File Upload, Message Archive Management and other peices of information that confirm everything is as it should be.

Confirming the Security of the XMPP Server

Thanks to the efforts of Conversations.im, they have provided an excellent service to us all called the XMPP Compliance Tester that link takes you directly to the compliance tests of our own XMPP server, at the time of writing this it is at 95%, which is better than most, but we will get it to 100% in the coming days.

Joining a room

So you have this app, so how do you find people to talk to? You can search for them within the app but the easiest way is to find people on our Rooms Page

Once you have clicked the link you will find a list of rooms (dont worry, it's early days yet, we will be adding a whole lot more soon).

Summary

We hope this has been helpful to you and we will have more tutorials coming soon; you should be able to connect the dots from these tutorials as the different clients behave more or less the same.

Please share this with like minded people and promote the use of free and open source software.