Delta Chat
August 06, 2024
More About Delta Chat
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.
Latest Version
1.46.7
August 06, 2024
merlinux
Communication
Android
413,973
Free
chat.delta
Report a Problem
User Reviews
Saba Miri
1 year ago
Very, very charming. But I wish that because it uses encryption، there are settings where messages between Delta Chat owners are not displayed in e-mail.
Zulekha Yasmin
3 years ago
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!
Cruiser
2 years ago
1. it will be good if you can put thumbnails in youtube links.. messages are coming lately.. sometimes almost in next day.. 2. all users should be able to set their 'disappearing messages' for themselves. especially in group chats.
Agus Zhoe
4 years ago
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.
I F
4 years ago
All good, but always problems with the notifications. No matter how it is setup in the notification settings, message alerts are hit or miss.
pawel
1 year ago
Excellent app for secure messaging without need for centralized servers. Everything works out of the box, no configuration necessary auto-encryption is a charm. Excellent overall.
A Google user
5 years ago
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.
Linux
1 year ago
Stars 🌟 speak louder ✨️ than words. I would like to add that similar apps like mailbus and spike aren't open source and with delta your data is safe and secure, saved on your device and not on a server. They don't collect any of your personal information either. 6 stars definitely donating soon
Samuel Li (Sam)
4 years ago
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.
Saptarshi Roy
4 years ago
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! 🙏
Sajjad Kabir Joy
3 years ago
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!
Hock-Soon LEE
4 years ago
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.
Alex HS
2 years ago
Absolutely fantastic concept, app is very fast and snappy. Look forward to seeing where the devs go with this. I honestly think something like this is the future of messaging unless the highly unlikely outcome of matrix replacing email happens
László Kohányi
3 years ago
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.
Vishal Verma
1 year ago
It's nice but it needs improvement. There is no option to choose wallpaper. There is no option to calling. There is no option to make story or status.
John “Johnnyboy” Do
3 years ago
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.
Yuri
2 years ago
Great replacement of WhatsApp by using a decentralized technology backbone that is already in place: email. However the app still need to mature in development. For example: if someone sends multiple messages after each other within a short amount of time (just like any IM some people unfortunately sends a message for every line ..) for some reason at the receivers end the messages do not appear in the correct order. can't tell if this is caused by the order of the emails receiving in the inbox
M Johnson
2 years ago
Have been using for about a month now. Works well and have had no issues. When others understand that they will be using their own email and not some messaging app that tracks everything they do, they are more likely to give it a try. Highly recommended. Two things I would like to see in future updates are: A password lock for the app itself and the ability if you use two or more accounts, to have a different background for each account. Hopefully the developers will add these features.
EJL
1 year ago
Would be nice to have the option to customize/change colors of receive/sent messages. So far, acquainting myself with the app. Another thing that would be helpful is to be able to short press (versus long press) on either an avatar or chat message within the main screen list and delete chats that way. Also, swipe left/right on a chat message to either call that contact; delete, mark as read (or unread) a message. Hopefully these features or at least a few of them can be implemented??
brantcy
2 years ago
I love the concept, and everything works smoothly. The messages between my phone and my wife's seem to experience a hefty (in terms of instant messaging anyway) delay. Messages can take anywhere from 5 seconds to nearly a minute. Doesn't seem like something we can use as a daily driver unfortunately. If there's a checklist of steps I can take to reduce that lag, please let me know!
