Gather is a decentralized messaging app. Message content is end-to-end encrypted and the servers never hold it in plaintext. No phone number, no email — the keys generated on your device are your identity.
No phone number. No email. Just you.
When we have to choose, confidentiality comes first, decentralization second, performance third.
One-to-one chats use X3DH and the Double Ratchet, the same family of design as the Signal protocol. Group chats keep a separate signed key chain for each sender. If encryption fails, nothing is sent — there is no plaintext fallback.
Messages travel over a peer-to-peer network of nodes, with no central database and no account server. If the node you are connected to goes down, the app switches to the next one automatically.
Signing up needs no phone number, email or real name. Your identity is a key pair generated on your device; the private key and recovery phrase never leave it.
Privacy should not cost you convenience.
Text, photos, voice messages, files and location. Quote, forward, unsend, edit, react, read receipts and typing indicators.
Create and invite, join approval, announcements, mute, polls and tasks. The member list lives only on members' devices, never on the nodes.
When your contact is offline, the message waits as ciphertext on several nodes until they come back. The storage nodes cannot tell who sent it or who it is for.
Turn on disappearing messages in a direct chat and messages are destroyed a set time after they have been read.
Your contact list can be restored on a new device from an encrypted backup. An account is active on one device at a time.
Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean.
A few steps from install to your first encrypted message.
Generate your keys in the app and set a password. Write down your recovery phrase and keep it safe — if you lose it, nobody can recover your account.
Send a contact request using their address or QR code. Once they accept, you can start chatting.
The two devices agree on keys locally; from then on every message is encrypted on your device before it leaves.
If your contact is offline, the message waits as ciphertext and is delivered when they come back.
Some words are meant for one person only.
Anyone along the way can read the address on the envelope;
only the two of you know what the letter says.
If they're asleep, the letter waits at the door until they wake.
Gather means coming together: people in one place, saying what they want to say.
The mark is a reshaped letter G that reads as a chat bubble. The point at the lower left stands for breaking convention and finding a way through.
Want to know how it works? Here are the public notes on the architecture, the protocol and the node network.
Gather for Android and iOS is in testing. We will publish the official download channels on the download page.
