Fossify Messages

Fossify Messages is an SMS and MMS app from Fossify, the project that carries on the open-source Simple Mobile Tools apps after they were sold in 2023. It continues Simple SMS Messenger under a new package name, and is maintained by Naveen Singh. Fossify sums it up as “SMS and MMS search, scheduling, backup, and blocking.” Versions 1.10.0 and 1.10.1 came out on 10 October 2026; 1.10.2, on 24 October, only updated translations.

We waited for 1.10.0 before adding it: that release “Fixed exposed action receivers for security”, a flaw that let other apps on the phone trigger some of its notification actions, such as deleting a message.

It has to be your default SMS app

Android lets one app at a time be the default SMS app, and only that one receives and stores messages. Fossify Messages asks for that role when it starts and closes if you decline. It then needs permission to read and send SMS; contacts are optional, used for names, and notifications are needed to show incoming messages. The app requires a phone with mobile telephony.

What it does

• Conversations, including group messages; the first time you send to a group, it asks whether to send it as MMS or as separate texts. Search, quick replies from the notification, attachments, and since 1.10.0 a player for audio attachments in MMS.
• Scheduled messages: long-press Send and pick a date and time. On Android 12 and later, this needs the Alarms & reminders permission.
• Blocking: numbers go on Android’s own block list, which the default phone app and the default SMS app share, so a number blocked in Fossify Phone is blocked here too. Entries can use * as a wildcard. You can also block by keyword and block numbers not in your contacts. Blocked messages are discarded before they are stored; there is no spam folder. The same screen shows a switch for blocking hidden numbers, but in our reading of this version’s code, Messages never checks it.
• Backups: export to a JSON file and import it again, as described in the questions below.
• App lock, optional, with a PIN, pattern, password or fingerprint.

Defaults worth checking: notifications on the lock screen show the sender and the message, delivery reports are off, and long messages are not turned into MMS.

What goes online

The app itself, nothing: it declares no internet permission and contains no analytics. Text messages go out through your carrier, and MMS through Android’s MMS service over mobile data. Fossify’s policy: “The app does not send app data, usage records, or identifiers to Fossify.”

Because it can read and send your messages, security scanners sometimes flag sideloaded copies. When McAfee, and a Google warning that messages had been forwarded, flagged copies installed from GitHub, F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid, the maintainer called both false positives.

About this file

• This is Fossify’s own build of version 1.10.2, the “foss” edition, byte for byte the APK on the project’s GitHub release, which IzzyOnDroid distributes unchanged. F-Droid also distributes Fossify-signed files but, on 26 October 2026, offered 1.10.1. All of them carry the same Fossify certificate and update one another. Fossify says its Google Play releases use the same key and package name; we can’t check Play’s copy.
• The 6.8 MB file runs on Android 8.0 and later and declares 16 permissions: SMS and MMS, contacts, phone state for choosing the SIM, calling a contact directly, exact alarms and starting at boot for scheduled messages, notifications, and fingerprint for the app lock.
• Fossify Messages is licensed under the GPL-3.0. It sends MMS with Fossify’s fork of Klinker’s android-smsmms library.
• The screenshots, from the project, date from December 2024, before 1.5.0 redesigned the conversation list.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the IzzyOnDroid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.