Messages
Chats, groups, voice calls and stories. No phone number, nothing to sell, and conversations that can tidy up after themselves on both phones at once.
See what's in it
Private messaging
Simple, private messaging.
Messages are locked on your phone and can only be opened by the person you sent them to. No phone number, no ads, and nobody reading over your shoulder. We're also upfront about where the limits are.
No phone number
No ads, no trackers
Free and open source
Free to use, open to read, and yours to run on your own server
Free forever
No ads
No phone number
Open source
Yours to host
What you get
Three things, and they share one lock.
Messages, your files and your keys — the same account, the same passphrase, and the same rule throughout: it's sealed on your phone before it goes anywhere, so there's nothing readable in the middle for anyone to ask us for.
Files
Your documents stay on your phone rather than on our servers, marked with how sensitive they are, and sealed the moment you send one to somebody.
See how it worksWallet
A standard twenty-four-word phrase that works in any other wallet, a new address each time you receive something, and keys nobody but you can reach.
See what's yoursMessages is on Android today. Files and Wallet arrive with the iPhone app, which isn't out yet — each page says exactly where it stands.
Good to know
A few things worth knowing.
Every messenger has limits. These are ours, in plain terms, so that nothing about how this works comes as a surprise later on.
Relays talking to each other means more servers see something
When two relays exchange a message, each one learns that the other had traffic for it. Nobody reads the message, but the fact of it is spread across more operators than a single server would be. That is the trade for being able to leave, and it is why an operator has to switch it on deliberately rather than finding it already on.
Encryption covers the message, not the fact you sent one
Our server has to know who to hand a message to, so it can see that you wrote to someone and roughly when. It cannot read a word of what you said. That is true of any messenger that delivers to people who are offline.
See exactly what's keptAn outside audit is still ahead of us
The code is open and heavily tested, and the design is published so anyone can review it. A paid review by a security firm is a different kind of assurance, and it is one we would like to fund.
What an audit would cover
How it works
How your messages stay private.
You don't need any of this to use the app. But if you have ever wondered what "end-to-end encrypted" actually means, it comes down to three ideas.
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1
Your phone makes a lock and a key
It hands out copies of the lock to anyone who wants to write to you. The key that opens them stays on your phone, and isn't shared with us or anyone else.
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2
Your friend locks the message before sending
By the time it reaches our server it's already shut, and we don't have the key. Neither of you has to be online at the same time for this to work.
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3
Every message gets a fresh lock
The locks change as the conversation goes along, so even if one were ever opened, it wouldn't help with the messages that came before it.
All three ideas have proper technical names, and if you would like the full version with the details filled in, it is all in the specification.
Get it
Get Flamenet Messenger
Android is ready to install today. The iPhone version is still being prepared — this page will say so the moment it opens.
iPhone
Not open yet
Android
Download the app (APK)
Server
Ready — run your own
Source code
Read the code
Available in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru and Bolivia. Signing up from anywhere else is refused, and the app will say so rather than looking broken. This page is readable everywhere on purpose — finding out after you have installed something and chosen a password is a worse way to learn it.
Run it on your own machine.
The server is two containers and a config file. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing that phones home, and it serves this very page — so a fresh install explains itself rather than greeting you with an error.
The server is where your account and any undelivered messages live. Running it yourself keeps all of that on hardware you control.
cp .env.example .env
# fill in the three secrets it asks for
docker compose up -d
Developers
Everything is written down.
This part is for anyone who would like the details. Everything the apps do is written down, and the two engines are tested against each other.
One document, start to finish
How the encryption works and how the server behaves are described in one document, so anyone who wants to write their own version has what they need.
Read the specificationTwo versions, checked against each other
The JavaScript and Swift engines are tested against each other and against published examples, so compatibility is something we measure rather than assume.
How they are testedOpen source, free to reuse
The encryption engine is public and freely licensed. Read it, reuse it, or let us know if you spot a mistake.
Source codeNothing here is home-made. The encryption is built from published, standard building blocks that other secure messengers use too, and the specification names every one of them and explains why it was chosen.
Running protocol version 3 · this server answers for relay.flamenet.io
Community
Ways to look closer
Some of the most useful help we get isn't code — it's someone reading the design closely and telling us what they find.
FAQ
Common questions.
Can you read my messages?
No. The server holds a sealed envelope and nothing that opens it, and there is no plain mode to switch to — so there is no setting that quietly hands your messages over. That holds even if you run the server yourself: you would be looking at sealed envelopes too.
So what does the server know about me?
That you have an account, who you write to, when, roughly how big the message was, and the internet address you connected from. It has to know where to send things. It doesn't know what any of it said. There's a page listing every last field rather than a paragraph summarising it.
How do I know I'm really talking to my friend?
There are two ways to check, and neither one depends on trusting us. Every key is published to a list that can't be rewritten afterwards, and your app won't accept a key that isn't in it, so any substitution would leave a permanent record. You can also compare a short safety number with your friend in person or over the phone — if the numbers match, there is nobody in between.
Do I need a phone number?
No. A username and an email address. People reach you by the name your friends already know you by, and your number never enters the picture.
What does it cost?
Nothing, and there is no paid tier waiting in the wings. There are no ads and nothing to sell either, so donations are what keep it going.
Can I really run it myself?
Yes, and we test it that way. It's a Docker Compose file with the server and its database; the apps can be pointed at your address instead of ours. The instructions fit on one page.
Has it been audited?
Not by an outside firm yet — that costs money we are still raising. The engine has a large test suite, the two implementations are checked against each other, and the design is published so anyone can review it. Those are all worth something, and they are a different thing from a professional review, so we keep the two clearly apart.
What if I lose my phone?
Sign that device out from another one you still have. Its keys and anything still waiting for it are removed together, so a phone that is no longer in your hands can't receive anything new.