Often, the fight for open source and freedom can get down to quite mundane yet practical terms. However, the victories that emerge from this battle can be beneficial for all. For instance: With Beeper, we needed a memory boost for displaying notifications, as we have end-to-end encryption support for networks like Signal; however, Apple's default allocation was only 15 megabytes — barely sufficient for any substantial procedure. Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's former CEO, initiated a lobbying effort with the EU’s Digital Markets Act on behalf of the team to allow third-party apps the same memory limits Apple reserves for its own apps – 50MB as opposed to 15MB (and up to 250MB on their more advanced devices).
We received a notification today that as a part of iOS 26 update that's been distributed to 2.3B devices worldwide, our memory limits issue has been globally addressed, and this applies to every application developer. Furthermore, some interoperability requests we had for SMS/RCS have been addressed for EU users. We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Apple for bestowing on us all new capabilities to construct remarkable user experiences that can match what they strive to deliver. For those interested in the details, feel free to read the technical deep dive that Beeper just published.
Side note, if it's your first time hearing about it, Beeper is an Automattic product whose goal is to democratize messaging, similar to how WordPress democratized the digital experience platform for the world. It consolidates all your messages from your acquaintances across 11 different networks, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter/X, Signal, Discord, into a single inbox. We launched a new version in July, which achieves this in a completely secure manner that's local to your device, ensuring the same encryption, privacy, and security that each network provides is sustained.