Answers to common questions about setting up and using less.ms.
This can happen if a dark wallpaper is combined with dark text, or if a very low surface opacity makes controls invisible. There's an easy way out that doesn't require being able to see the screen clearly.
On any device — your computer, another phone, or a tablet — visit:
Scan the QR code with your phone's camera. It will open a recovery screen inside the app — displayed in high-contrast black and white regardless of your current theme — where you can choose Light Mode or Dark Mode and reset your display to a readable state.
A regular expression (regex for short) is a flexible pattern for matching text. Instead of looking for an exact phrase, a regex lets you describe the shape of what you want to match.
A few common building blocks:
. — matches any single character.* — matches anything (zero or more characters)\d — matches any digit (0–9)https?:// — matches "http://" or "https://"(free|win|prize) — matches "free", "win", or "prize"For example, the pattern (?i)(free gift|you.ve won|claim your) would block any message containing those phrases, regardless of capitalization.
You don't need to know regex to use less.ms — the Sender and Keyword rule types work with plain text — but regex gives you much more power when you're ready for it.
When a message contains a web link, less.ms can look up the domain name in that link and find the IP address of the server it points to. An IP rule blocks any message whose domain resolves to a specific IP address.
This is particularly powerful against spammers who send from many different phone numbers and use many different-looking domain names — but host all of them on the same server. Political fundraising spam is a classic example: you might receive messages from blue-spam.co, dem-spam.io, and spam-maga.net, each appearing to be a different organization, but all pointing to the same IP address behind the scenes.
Block that IP once, and every message from any of those domains is stopped — even new ones you've never seen before, as long as they're hosted on the same server.
Simple ASCII art like a winking face ;-) or a heart <3 doesn't depend on character widths, so it looks the same everywhere. Multi-line pictures, however, only align correctly when every character takes up exactly the same horizontal space — that's what a monospaced (fixed-width) font provides.
SMS and MMS have no standard for fonts. lessms works around this by wrapping ASCII art macros in a pair of invisible Unicode markers: \u2060\u200B to begin monospaced rendering and \u200B\u2060 to return to the default font. When lessms receives a message containing these markers, it renders the enclosed text in a monospaced font so the columns line up perfectly.
Other messaging apps are welcome to do the same — the markers are just zero-width Unicode characters that wouldn't normally be found next to each other — but because no official standard exists, only other lessms users are likely to see the art rendered in monospace. Everyone else will see the characters in whatever proportional font their app uses, which may cause columns to shift.
Go to Settings → Themes → Wallpaper and tap Choose wallpaper to pick any photo from your gallery. A live preview shows exactly how it will look before you leave the screen.
Wallpaper opacity controls how strongly your photo shows through against the app's background color. At 100% you see the full image; at 0% the photo disappears entirely and only the background color is visible. Values in between blend the two together.
If you want a subtle tinted effect rather than a full-screen photo, try dialing this down to around 20–40%.
Surface opacity controls how transparent the main content areas are — the conversation list rows, message bubbles, the top bar, and so on. Lower it and those elements become see-through, letting your wallpaper show behind the content. Raise it and they become solid, hiding the wallpaper behind them.
Think of it as how much you can "see through" the app to the image behind it.
Try the Blur slider. Blurring softens the detail in the photo so it fades into the background rather than competing with the text in front of it. Even a small amount of blur can make a big difference in readability.
You can also raise Surface opacity so the content rows are more solid, or reduce Wallpaper opacity to tone down the image.
No — and in fact, most people shouldn't. lessms is designed to be your SMS app, not your only messaging app.
As long as you have a phone number, you'll receive SMS messages. Carriers use it for 2FA codes, appointment reminders, and package tracking. Spammers use it too, because it reaches everyone. That's the problem lessms solves: it gives you control over what lands in your inbox and what goes to Junk.
For chatting with friends and family, most people already use an app purpose-built for it — and they should keep doing so. Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, and others are excellent general messaging platforms. They're end-to-end encrypted, work across iPhone and Android, and your choice usually comes down to which one your friends are already on. lessms runs happily alongside any of them.
The one exception is Google Messages. Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, and Google Messages all offer a similar set of modern messaging features — read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality media, and so on. The difference is that Google Messages also acts as an SMS app, so it must claim the default SMS role to function. That creates a conflict: you can only have one default SMS app, and it has to be either lessms or Google Messages. The others — Signal, WhatsApp, Discord — are internet-only messaging platforms that don't touch SMS at all, so there's nothing to conflict over.
Android only allows one app at a time to act as the default SMS app, and that app is responsible for receiving, storing, and sending all SMS and MMS messages — including handling notifications in the background, even when you're not actively using it.
When lessms is not the default, it has no way to intercept incoming messages before they reach you. Your rules can't run, spam can't be filtered, and the Junk folder won't collect anything — because lessms simply never sees the messages arrive.
Setting lessms as the default doesn't affect your existing messages or contacts. Your message history is stored by Android and remains accessible. If you ever switch back to another app, everything will still be there.
RCS — your phone may call it “chat features” — is a newer messaging system run by Google. It is a closed, proprietary format: only Google's own Messages app, and a few phone makers Google has approved, are permitted to use it. Android does not let any other app, lessms included, send or receive RCS. lessms instead uses SMS and MMS, the universal texting standards that every phone supports.
Switching to lessms trades one set of features for another. What you gain:
What you give up — the RCS-only extras:
Your phone number can stay registered with Google's RCS service even after you change apps, so it's worth turning RCS off so other people's phones know to reach you by standard text. In Google Messages, go to Settings → RCS chats and turn it off. If you no longer have that app set up, use Google's deactivation page:
messages.google.com/disable-chat
It can take up to 30 days for existing RCS group chats to drop you completely.
For the full walkthrough — including a safe switching checklist and your group's options — see RCS group chats and less.ms.
Yes — you can get very effective spam filtering with just two rules and no regex knowledge required.
Step 1 — Allow your contacts. In the Allow tab, turn on Contact whitelist. This lets anyone in your phone's contact list message you freely, bypassing all other rules.
Step 2 — Block everything else. In the Trash tab, add a rule with Type set to REGEX and Pattern set to . (a single period). This matches any message and sends it to your Junk folder.
That's it. Anyone you know gets through; everyone else goes to Junk.
lessms has three places messages live. Msgs shows all active conversations — ones you're waiting on or someone is waiting on you for. Archive holds your conversation history — not closed out, just not currently in play. Junk catches anything matched by your filter rules, usually spam, but occasionally a false positive.
If someone replies to an archived conversation, it automatically moves back to Msgs, so you can always trust that new messages show up in Msgs, even if attached to older conversations.
A clean habit: archive anything you're not actively engaged in. That keeps Msgs short and meaningful at a glance. Then peek into Junk periodically — especially right after making an appointment — in case a rule caught a legitimate reminder.
When you spot a keeper in your Junk folder, swipe left to Restore it to Msgs, then tap Add allow rule to whitelist the sender. That's all it takes — the same sender won't land in Junk again.
If the message is from a real person rather than an automated sender, you may prefer to add them to your Contacts instead. That option appears on the Restore dialog when you have the Contact whitelist rule enabled on the Rules page — adding them to Contacts will let their future messages through automatically.
Ask in the community forum — other lessms users are usually quick to help.
Visit the forum