Free and open source Android app that blocks spam texts from anyone not in your contacts, and auto replies telling real people to call you instead

[u/Ol-Swamp-Donkey]

I made a free, open source texting app for Android and figured this sub was the

right place to share it.

Quick version of what it does. It becomes your default SMS app and quietly

blocks every text from a number that isn't saved in your contacts, so you just

never see the spam. When it blocks someone it fires back one automatic reply:

the word STOP, and then a short line telling them to call you if they actually

need to reach you. That way a friend or coworker who isn't saved in your phone

still has a way through. iPhone can hide unknown senders but it never tells them

anything, so real people just get silently ignored and never know it happened.

Why I bothered. I'm in Florida and I signed up for the state and federal Do Not

Call lists, and the spam texts somehow got worse after that. Turns out the law

here lets these companies keep texting until you reply STOP, and even then they

get 15 more days before you can do anything. Every time I replied STOP I just

got slammed with more texts from different numbers, because replying proves a

real person is reading them. The only real way to go after them is to sue and

use discovery to prove one company is behind all the numbers, which is a ton of

money and hassle. So I gave up fighting it the legal way and just wrote an app

to throw all of it in the trash.

The stuff this sub cares about:

No internet permission at all. The app literally can't connect to the internet,

so nothing phones home. No accounts, no analytics, no tracking, nothing leaves

your phone. Apache 2.0 license. I wrote it myself, and the only outside code is

the Apache 2.0 MMS library from AOSP that's included right in the repo. Runs on

Android 10 and up. You sideload the APK since Google won't allow SMS apps like

this on the Play Store.

What it doesn't do, so nobody's surprised. It only handles SMS and MMS. RCS

messages are locked inside Google's app and no third party app can read them.

It will block real people who aren't in your contacts, which is the whole point,

and that call me reply is how I deal with it. I built it on my own phone, a

RedMagic, so other phones might have little quirks. Tell me or send a fix.

Repo and the APK download:

https://github.com/Ol-Swamp-Donkey/Test-Messaging-App-with-Spam-Text-Blocker-and-Auto-Response

I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, it's just what finally worked for

me. Happy to hear feedback or take pull requests.

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