When it comes to picking a messaging app, most people default to WhatsApp, iMessage, or the DM tools baked into Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, all of which now tout end to end encryption and privacy tweaks such as WhatsApp letting you hide your own phone number from other users. But there is a lesser known app called Delta Chat that pushes privacy further than any of these mainstream options, and it is worth knowing about.
Decentralized, anonymous, and almost impossible to spam
Delta Chat is decentralized, meaning there is no single point of failure or control sitting with one company, it is open source so anyone can inspect how it works, and it is end to end encrypted. Signing up never requires a phone number. You can even send messages to people who have never installed the app in the first place, which is unusual for a chat platform built around this level of privacy.
How Delta Chat actually works under the hood
Delta Chat has existed for roughly a decade now, and it was originally built as a way to keep everyday conversations out of the hands of big technology companies. Over the years it has picked up more and more features, become noticeably simpler to use, and expanded across more platforms than when it started. Alongside that growth, the way the platform itself operates behind the scenes has also changed quite a bit.
For much of Delta Chat's existence, the app ran on top of ordinary email: you signed up using your own email address, and the chat app essentially acted as a wrapper around specific conversations sitting in your regular inbox. The heavy lifting of storage and infrastructure was left to whichever email provider you used, and because of that setup, anyone who owned an email address could join in.
That has since changed. Delta Chat now issues you its own email address automatically and quietly manages all of the necessary technical plumbing itself. Beyond making the app more convenient to set up, this shift means you do not have to reveal anything about yourself to use it, there is no request for a phone number, no request for an email address, no request for your name, or for any other personal detail.
Skipping all of that personal information might sound like it would leave the door open for spam, but the encryption built into Delta Chat closes that door firmly, nobody can message you or spam you without first knowing your specific encryption key. Your address on Delta Chat is simply a random string of characters that you hand out only to people you already trust. There is no public directory of users, and no way for a stranger to look someone up.
Familiar features, wrapped in extra privacy
Despite all of that anonymity, the app still carries the features people have come to expect from a modern chat app. That list includes audio and video calls, group chats, read receipts, and the ability to set messages to disappear after a chosen amount of time. Files can be shared with contacts easily, and Delta Chat lets you stay logged in on more than one device at the same time.
Setting up an account without handing over any personal details
You can begin your journey through the desktop apps built for Windows or macOS, or through the mobile apps available for Android or iOS. As already mentioned, no personal information is required at signup, all you need to do is tap or click Create new profile on the very first splash screen that greets you.
From there, the app asks you to choose a username that your contacts will recognize you by, though it does not have to be your real name, and you are also given the option to add a profile picture. Once that is done, you land on the main chat screen, which will be almost entirely empty at first, apart from a welcome message and a folder set aside for your own saved messages.
Adding a contact on Delta Chat means tapping the QR code icon, which sits at the top of the interface on Android and desktop, or at the bottom of the screen on iOS. You can ask the other person to scan that code using Delta Chat on their own device, or you can do the scanning yourself. There is also an option to generate an invite link instead, one that can be pasted into an email or into another messaging app entirely.
What using the app day to day actually feels like
Once you are inside the app, Delta Chat behaves in a way that will feel familiar if you have used any other modern chat app before. A long press on mobile, or a right click on desktop, brings up options to mute, pin, or archive a particular conversation, while the new chat button, shown as a plus icon on both Android and desktop and as a pen in a box icon on iOS, lets you begin a fresh conversation or set up an entirely new group chat.
To reach the settings for one specific chat, you tap the three dots in the top right corner on Android, tap the contact's name at the top of the screen and then the three dots in the top right on iOS, or click the three dots in the top right corner on the desktop app. From that menu you can turn on disappearing messages, search back through the conversation, clear its entire history, or simply mute and archive it instead.
There is also a separate, main settings screen for the app as a whole, reached through the large cog icon on the desktop interface, the three dots in the top right corner on Android, and a dedicated Settings tab on iOS. These broader settings let you choose background images for your individual chats, switch read receipts on or off, and adjust the quality of the media files you send and receive.
Know More: https://delta.chat/en/
Why Delta Chat might beat WhatsApp or Signal for privacy
With plenty of other encrypted, secure chat apps already available, including WhatsApp and Signal, the obvious question is what actually makes Delta Chat worth switching to. Not having to hand over any personal data at all is by far the biggest draw here, there is no phone number involved, no email address required, and nobody is able to find you or spam you unless you personally choose to add them as a contact.
The decentralized design of the platform adds another layer of resilience on top of that. Delta Chat's storage servers and nodes are spread out across several different locations rather than sitting in one place, so a single power outage or a single technical fault somewhere cannot bring the entire system crashing down. If you want even more control over your own data, you can go a step further and host your own Delta Chat data yourself.
Because the app runs on top of ordinary email infrastructure, Delta Chat is also considerably harder to block or censor compared with something like Signal, and it is easier to export your own messages out of it whenever you want to. Choosing to actually use Delta Chat does come with the usual hurdle of convincing friends and family to install yet another app on top of whatever they are already using day to day, but you do not need your entire contacts list on board for it to be worthwhile. It can work perfectly well simply as a private space reserved just for you and a small handful of the people closest to you.
