Which server? The Tigase ones or others?

There are no details here. Please add missing details:

• iOS versions
• used XMPP servers
• which SiskinIM was causing the issue? (from AppStore or from TestFlight)

I can say that I've tested it with a few servers and it worked without any issue.

iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12. sure.im and tigase.im was tried.

Installed from app store.

It could be a non intuitive flow as well.

Have you read the account registration instructions presented to you? You need to confirm your email by tapping on the link sent to your email address. Then you need to enable accounts in the SiskinIM settings to make them work.

3 of my friends could not sign up, I tried myself as well.

But this was not clear at all from the ui that email confirmation is necessary.

Probably there should be a standard way to represent pending confirmation status from server and display it on the client side.

can confirm this is an issue, was able to register in monal no issue, for example to conversations.im but it did not work here, unending loading spinner . iphone 7 ios 15.4

Unfortunately, there is no way to indicate that the account requires confirmation (in the XMPP specification it is not defined). We will work on improving UX in this case.

@hantu85 I can see conversations on android asks for a captcha confirmation for conversations.im accounts. May be we can do a similar thing to ask for the confirmation code sent via email or possibly adding sms otp confirmation as another option - as many people seem to prefer sms over email?

I think https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0158.html is flexible enough to authenticate via email confirmation.

The confirmation to create an account (captcha support) is already implemented (and even used by the server during account creation). The issue here is to confirm the email account - the server sends a link and the user needs to open it but the user is not aware of that. We plan to fix that but other things had higher priority.

Can't the email confirmation also be presented as a second challenge so user will know they have to respond? The clicking link can be replaced by entering a confirmation code received in email. But if you think you already found a better way, that should be fine.

I think about using SASL2 for that. It is implemented in a preview version and hopefully, we will be able to use it soon (waiting for publication of updated version of the XEP).

What do you think about XEP-0389 in this context?

@hantu85 I think sasl2 update is published now https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0388.html