Delta Chat
Technically, Delta Chat is an e-mail application but with a modern chat interface. E-Mail in a new dress if you will. Chat and contact data remain on your devices. No uploads of addressbook, calendar or other personal data. There simply are no Delta Chat servers where anything could be uploaded to.
Use Delta Chat with anyone out of billions of people: just use their e-mail address. Recipients will see a simple e-mail and may directly reply with their own e-mail app. They don't need to install Delta Chat, visit websites or sign up anywhere. If you send a picture or other media to a chat group your chat recipients will see a nice regular e-mail with an attachment. If they send a message and attachments back, you will see the media in your chat for this contact.
Delta Chat sends e-mails using your e-mail account and provider of choice. You can change mobile numbers without any trouble or even work without any SIM card or phone number at all. You can export all your chat data on one device, import it on a new device and happily continue chatting. Not requiring mobile numbers avoids cell-tower and other tracking.
Delta Chat establishes end-to-end encryption automatically when chat partners start communicating with each other. On a two-people chat, just send a "Hi!" message and already receive an encrypted reply if the other side accepts you as contact. End-to-End encryption not only works between Delta Chat apps, but also with other e-mail apps if they support the Autocrypt Level 1 encryption standard.
Moreover, Delta Chat offers an experimental "verified group" chat guaranteeing end-to-end encryption to be secure against active network or provider attacks. This unique feature is based on recent usability and cryptographic research and is going to be refined after further user-testing with at-risk users in 2019.
Delta Chat offers instant chatting and synchronization across devices. Messages sent on one device will quickly show up on other devices. There is an early iPhone version and mostly stable downloads for Linux, Mac OS Laptops and an experimental Windows download. All Desktop versions can be used standalone or in conjunction with a mobile version.
Delta Chat is a relatively young project, but already has a lot to offer. It employs a pragmatic and usability-driven approach to decentralized messaging. No re-inventing of wheels unless one of them causes actual trouble or concern. We rather often think about removing technology than adding yet more of it, trying to keep things maintainable and understandable for us and others. Most popular programming languages and many human languages are involved in the development of Delta Chat apps and the various activities around it.
We are grateful for any help, be it contributing good bug reports, helping other users on the forum, participating in our open development with PRs and reviews, translations to more languages, working on new bots, setting up new experimental mail servers ... or a donation if you can.
We currently use monetary donations to help contributors join us at our repeated one-week long gatherings -- where we develop and user-test with locals and evolve new directions and plans.
Category : Communication
Reviews (29)
Great idea and constantly developed. You can use an external or your own email server to communicate. The interface is instantly familiar - a hint of WhatsApp here. You can use it on multiple devices and on PC too! It is easy to reinstall it on new devices and recover the encryption.
The ultimate instant messaging platform that ensures privacy AND security. For those uncomfortable about sharing phone number, there is simply nothing better than Delta Chat. The idea of using the existing and widely deployed e-mail infrastructure for chat is both elegant and simple. Thank you for this amazing free/open source application, developers!
It's really impressive to see how many functionalities you can implement just using the standard email protocol.
One of the most helpful features of Telegram is the ability to edit a sent message to correct typos. Could you please consider including this feature? It is really helpful and saves time, instead of the usual, copy, correct and resend.
Update, you clearly said initial few messages could be not encrypted. My mistake. 5 star. Here is why I am still concerned about private while using this app. In DeltaChat: The “MY ORIGINAL MESSAGE” message you sent was displayed on the screen of the recipient. This is no guarantee the content was read. Perhaps it should be "“Encrypted message” everywhere? And I can see some EMAILs with original message (not encrypted) in the header section. e.g. "Chat: SOME MESSAGE.". I am sure it is a small bug and will be fixed soon.
Feature request: 1. Native Jitsi integration. 2. Ability to access past e-mails post sign-in (just like a standard e-mail app). 3. Ability to enter/customise the 'subject' line as required. Overall, this app has the capability to eclipse Spike with a bit more polish. Kudos to the development team! 🙏
Doesn't seem to work well with me and my friends using Yahoo and Gmail. We can see all the emails coming in and going out on the Yahoo/Gmail web interface, but the app only picks up a few of those messages. I like the idea but the app isn't usable at this point.
All good, but always problems with the notifications. No matter how it is setup in the notification settings, message alerts are hit or miss.
Bagus dan sangat membantu, hanya saja belum di lengkapi dengan Kemampuan untuk menelepon. yes it's able to make phone call also video call, and I think this App more Easy than Zoom because base on chat/message and more powerfully than other message/chat app with phone number base because if we loose the phone number we will not loose our contact (at least we must re register) or miss contact if that phone number was owned by other. this app look like we have and doing messaging using e-mail but more simple, after we install JItsi meet its aoutomatic integrated with this app The one greatest is now we have WIFI only gadget as powerful as gadget with Sim card as long as we have internet connection. so I have powerful App for communication and data share with worry-free, i hope this app will be massive user and i will starting from my family member. I have a sense if this app (or similarity) will become an officially app as personal ID (look like Line App in Japan but for me Line App look like junk because to many add). good job keep make it easy, clean from add like telegram. I wish you luck.
The ultimate instant mesaaging solution! Open source, cross platform, end-to-end encryption and the most secure and privare infrastructure that uses email. Super solid concept meets beautiful execution!
Better than the rest. Although please fix the glitch when signing onto my email.
Great app! Looks and works as other Messengers - but without an extra server or central control. Instead, use the email provider of your choice :) So, you need your email crefentials to log in (and a nice provider :)
Good one. It'll be so great if they add status feature also like whtsapp then It'll be easy for many of users to switch from that one to this one. Overall good and app user friendly.
Nice idea, but not yet mature enough. 1. Complex to authenticate user for email accounts other than google. Even with google, it could be complicated if a customer have 2WV. 2. Calls and Vedio calls. But that's ok for now.
Am missing messages halfway thru a chat. Friend kept having error message on his side saying my mailbox is unavailable. Am using Gmail.
Very nice app. Love decentralised servers. We are the network, no need for intermediaries.
I like the principle of using email to decentralise and get away from these silo communication platforms, but why is this app so huge? I can't install it on my phone it's too big!
Great idea for a message app. But Lately not getting email replies from non Delta chat users. Should make your app default app on Linux phone.
Love the idea! An easy implementation for voice calls would make this app complete mindblowing.
The only chat app I can trust. Thank you for the excellent job and the brilliant idea
it will be good if you can put thumbnails in youtube links.. messages are coming lately.. sometimes almost in next day..
Awesome experience. Can send messages like chatting on whatsapp 😂. 🥰
Comparable to other messenger services but with better long-term privacy. It won't suffer the same fate as Parler, or WhatsApp. You're better protected against overreaching governments. Big tech companies can't make profits at the expense of your freedoms. Social engineering technocrats are kept at bay. And it works just fine. Hopefully the video chat integration will be improved in time, but the current solution is useful enough. I'm happy with it.
Delta chat is an amazing concept, which is executed really well.
A very well executed concept only thing needed is imap server.👌👌👌👌
Couldn't connect to my Gmail account at all, failed in initial configuration.
Got Outlook? Then don't bother downloading, it don't work .
i cant sign in for gmail. it was better if we can signing in with phobe number. i dont like it.
Love the simplicity and the ability to switch between multiple accounts. This could be a very good alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram but in my personal opinion it's better because it uses your emails mail servers instead of a centralized server like the other mentioned apps. It's also cool that if the other person doesn't have Delta Chat he/she wil still receive the message in there emails inbox. It's not a perfect app but I comes close to it.