Sunbird is back, bringing iMessage to Android (again)

The Sunbird app was launched in 2022 and allowed Android users to chat via iMessage with iPhone owners. Unfortunately, it shut down a year later and was pulled from the Google Play Store due to security concerns. Now, the team has announced that Sunbird is back.

The Sunbird team announced the app’s relaunch in an emailed press release, noting that it’s available to everyone via the Google Play Store. Messages sent by Sunbird users will indeed show up as blue bubbles on iPhones rather than the green bubbles associated with Android and other non-Apple platforms.

This app doesn’t just stop at giving Android users blue bubbles, according to Sunbird Messaging CEO Danny Mizrahi. The executive claims that iMessage features like reactions, replies, high-quality video, and group management all work via Sunbird for Android.

What about those security concerns?

Of course, the main reason why Sunbird was pulled in the first place was because it was a security nightmare. Investigations found that user data was stored in clear text and that the encryption claims fell short of reality. This was particularly embarrassing for Nothing at the time, as the smartphone brand launched the Nothing Chats app atop Sunbird’s foundation.

However, the team has touched on the relaunched app’s security improvements:

Your messages are encrypted on your device and in transit, and Sunbird doesn’t keep them, they pass through only long enough to be delivered. When you message an iPhone, Apple’s own iMessage encryption carries that final step, exactly as it always has. The technology behind it is protected by two issued US patents, with more detail available on our website.

We had some questions when we saw the aforementioned claim that messages are only retained long enough to be delivered. Mizrahi expanded on this in an emailed response to Android Authority questions:

The short answer: the current app does not keep your messages. Conversation history lives on the user’s device and the recipient’s device, not on our servers. A message moving through our infrastructure is protected in transit and released once it is delivered. Messages are encrypted on the phone before they leave it, in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and at rest on the device with AES-256. Media gets a hard expiration on our side: automatically deleted, typically within 48 hours and never longer than 72. On the final leg to an iPhone, the message is protected by Apple’s own iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird never modifies, intercepts, or weakens.

Also worth knowing, since it was part of the original concern: when a user connects iMessage, their Apple ID password is used once to set up the session and then destroyed. We do not store the password, and we do not keep an authentication token that would let us sign in as them later. The ongoing session is managed by Apple’s own Messages software, the same way it works on a personal Mac.

Furthermore, Mirazhi told us that an independent security auditing firm tested its rebuilt Sunbird app in a bid to replicate findings from a 2023 security report. The firm apparently failed to replicate these discoveries and reported “no critical vulnerabilities” in the app or backend API.

What else to know about the new Sunbird app?

Sunbird isn’t stopping here, either. The firm will bring a “Sunbird Intelligence” suite of on-device AI features to the app. This includes a conversation summary tool called Catch Me Up and an assistant for “simple” actions such as moving a chat to a different folder or drafting a reply. The app will also gain WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger integration. All of these new additions are slated to arrive later this quarter.

Keen to try Sunbird? I’d personally wait for more security researchers to get their hands on the app first. Nevertheless, the Sunbird app is available to download on the Google Play Store and has a 14-day free trial for new users. Otherwise, it’s available for $24.99 a year or $2.99 a month. 

The app relaunch also comes a while after Apple finally embraced RCS, enabling modern messaging between Android and iOS. RCS and Google Messages still lack some features you’d expect in a messaging app in 2026, but are these missing features enough for you to switch to Sunbird altogether?