Sunbird Messaging relaunched on the Google Play Store in August 2026, giving Android users access to iMessage — including blue bubbles, reactions, and high-quality video — for $2.99 per month. The app had shut down nearly three years earlier following security concerns.
The company says its rebuilt app addresses those earlier issues. According to Sunbird, messages are encrypted on the user’s device before transmission, encrypted in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption. On delivery to an iPhone, messages are protected by Apple’s iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird says it does not modify, intercept, or weaken. Any media sent or received is deleted “typically within 48 hours and never longer than 72,” and message content in transit is “released once it’s delivered.”
Sunbird CEO Danny Mizrahi told Android Authority that an independent security auditing firm tested the rebuilt app and found “no critical vulnerabilities.” Mizrahi also stated that Apple ID credentials are not retained: “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 app also supports Google Messages and SMS. Sunbird says integration with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger is coming later in 2026, along with an AI assistant capable of summarizing chats and drafting replies.
The relaunch comes as cross-platform messaging has improved through RCS support from both Apple and Google, though Android users can still disrupt iMessage group chats by breaking reactions and replies — a gap Sunbird’s service aims to fill.
Source: The Verge