As a counterpoint, I use conversations literally every day, and cannot recall the last time it crashed. My partner and kids have used it for at least the last 7 or 8 years to communicate with me and each other. I don't claim there are no issues, but "crashes often" isn't something I would expect to hear about it.

I don't find the UX to be clunky either, but I acknowledge that could just be my familiarity with the program, so I would leave that for others to dispute.

I ran into this exact problem. I needed to fork Conversations to add a lot of polish. My fork is definitely improved but still has a few rough edges I'm chipping away at.

What makes you think that? I haven't experienced, or heard of people having frequent crashes. Me and my family also use it to communicate to each other with no issues regarding the UI.

Crashes?!? I've been using Conversations for a long time and can't remember any crashes. Something must be wrong with your setup.

For me, the bigger problem is that I was unable to get OMEMO + Apple Clients working properly. I think OMEMO 1 has some design flaws and hope that OMEMO 2 will fix those.