New SMS client for KDE Connect (feedback welcome)

[Simon Redman]

Hi,

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm. I gave this app a try. It 
took a few patches to get it launched: The contact loader is targeting 
KF5 KPeople, and the main app calls qFatal if the KF5 loader can't 
execute, effectively requiring both KF5 for this app and KF6 for the KDE 
Connect daemon.  It tries to construct a tray icon with a 
QGuiApplication, which crashes due to not being able to create a QWidget 
without QApplication (at least on Plasma desktop). After launching, I 
just had a box with a red ! in the top left. Once I used the main SMS 
app to download a conversation, that conversation showed in the new app, 
so potentially it is not compatible with the latest version of the daemon.

Since you discuss the plugin API in the README, I'd be happy to help 
guide improvements there. Search, for example, would be cool to have. 
I'd recommend you start by writing down the API you envision and 
discussing it here or on Matrix. Some of the things you have highlighted 
in the new SMS README are not possible, so I don't know what else you 
might be thinking and I wouldn't want you to start down a path which is 
known to be blocked. For example, Android does not expose an API to wake 
the phone. As a side-note, I would advise that the Android SMS-fetching 
APIs are quite poorly documented and several are vendor-specific. I'd 
recommend not touching those, however I'd be open to a better way of 
presenting the data.

In general, I would encourage people to contribute to the main app if 
they find it is not sufficient. I am not protective of the current 
version, I would be excited if someone with UI expertise rebuilt it. 
Recently a community member re-worked message loading, and now 
navigation/scrolling on the official app is drastically improved.

Thanks,
Simon

On 8/9/26 18:18, Steve Benz wrote:
>
> I’ve been working on a new SMS client that integrates with KDE 
> Connect, with the goal of addressing some long‑standing usability and 
> reliability issues in the existing SMS app. It's at a point now where 
> it's ready for more people to try it out. I hope you'll find that you 
> much prefer it over the existing sms app.
>
> The code is here: https://github.com/NermNermNerm/smsapp.git
>
> And I’ve made a prebuilt release: 
> https://github.com/NermNermNerm/smsapp/releases/tag/v0.0
>
> I’m looking for feedback from people familiar with KDE Connect’s SMS 
> plugin. The biggest limitation right now is reliability — I’ve added 
> defensive logic to work around some of the plugin’s quirks, but there 
> are structural issues that can’t be solved on the client side alone. I 
> wouldn't want to put this thing out into the world without addressing 
> that.
>
> Before I go further, I’d like to hear what the community thinks: 
> whether this direction makes sense, whether there’s interest in 
> improving the SMS plugin itself, and whether this could eventually be 
> something worth upstreaming.
>
> If you have a few minutes, I’d really appreciate you giving it a try 
> and sharing your thoughts.
>
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