Every screen, in plain words.

Welcome to Chime

Hello, and thanks for being here. Chime is a free, private messenger built by one person for people who'd rather not be watched. No account, no phone number, no ads. Your messages travel straight between phones, locked so that only the person you sent them to can read them, and they keep moving even when the internet doesn't.

This guide is deliberately short. Each entry tells you what a thing is and what it does, and then gets out of your way.

Onboarding

First launch takes about two minutes and everything happens on your phone:

1. Pick a display name. It's how others see you; it isn't tied to any account and you can change it later.
2. Set a Vault Word and Vault Code. Together they derive the key that locks your identity. Chime keeps only what's locked with that key, never the word and code themselves; typing them is what proves it's you. Nothing on the phone can remind you of them, so keep them somewhere safe.
3. Set a 6-digit PIN. Your everyday unlock.
4. Set a Kill Code. A different 6 digits that erases all of Chime, and only Chime, if entered at the lock screen. More under In Case of Emergency.
5. Done. Chime shows your new Chime ID and verification fingerprint.

Already used Chime before? The welcome screen also offers Restore from guardians and Transfer from another phone.

Adding a contact

Three ways, pick whichever suits the moment:

Contacts added by Chime ID or pasted info start unverified. When you get the chance, open the contact and compare the number match together; once it matches, mark them verified and they join your trusted list too.

Chats

All your conversations, newest activity first. The small coloured badges under the header show which connections are live right now (internet, LAN, Bluetooth), so you always know how your messages are travelling. Tap a chat to open it; to start a new one, pick a person from the Contacts tab.

Groups

Group conversations, in three flavours: Standard for everyday groups, Geo-fenced for groups tied to a place and a lifespan, and Emergency for when something has gone wrong. The last two have their own entries under Features.

Contacts

Everyone you've added, with a dot for who's reachable right now. Contacts you have verified in person sit in their own TRUSTED section. The buttons along the top are the ways of adding someone.

You

Your profile card at the top, then every setting in the app, grouped into the sections below. The whole next chapter of this guide walks through them one by one.

Profile

The card with your name, avatar, and Chime ID. Tap it to edit how you appear, and to reach three important doors: Guardians, your encrypted backup, and device transfer for moving to a new phone.

Quick Actions

The switches you reach for often: the Scramble toggle, and your QR code for sharing your identity face to face.

Network

How Chime connects, with a switch for each road: peer-to-peer discovery (DHT), WiFi Direct, Bluetooth behaviour, Tor Mode for hiding who you talk to from the network itself, and Stay connected in background, which is what keeps messages arriving while the app is closed.

Curious what these actually do under the bonnet? That's the technical page's favourite subject.

Security

App lock and when the PIN is asked for, biometric unlock if you want it, the Vault for your most sensitive things, and your blocked contacts list.

Preferences

Appearance (themes, including some rather nice dark ones), Language (English and 繁體中文), Privacy (read receipts, typing, online status, all yours to switch), and Modules, where whole features can be turned on or off so the app only carries what you use.

About

Help, sharing Chime with a friend, reporting a bug (screenshots welcome, other people's messages not), and supporting the project.

Developer

Only appears if you've switched it on. Home of Diagnostics: technical readouts for troubleshooting, there for testers and the terminally curious. Nothing in it is needed for everyday use.

In Case of Emergency

The serious buttons, kept apart so they're never pressed by accident. Emergency wipe erases everything Chime holds, now: your messages, contacts, and identity. The rest of your phone is completely untouched; only Chime's data goes. And remember the Kill Code you set at onboarding: entered at the lock screen, it does the same thing while looking like a normal unlock.

Scramble

Makes your screen unreadable to anyone glancing over your shoulder: on the bus, in a queue, anywhere. You can still read it because you know what you wrote; they can't. Three ways to flip it: the toggle in Quick Actions, the lock icon at the top right of a chat (once the module is on in You > Modules), or typing /hide. The Screen Privacy Animation that goes with it can be turned on or off in You > Privacy.

Push to Talk

A walkie-talkie for the modern age. Hold the button, speak, let go; your voice arrives as instantly as a message does, over whatever connection Chime has. Recordings are capped at 10 seconds to keep the files small, which is exactly what lets them squeeze through even over Bluetooth. Handy when typing is a faff.

Accept files & voice messages, or don't

What's convenient for the sender isn't always convenient for the receiver, so in Chime the receiver decides. In You > Privacy you choose whether you accept files, media, and voice messages at all, and these aren't just filters on your side: turn voice messages off and the mic button disappears from your contacts' chats with you; turn files off and contacts are told not to send them, with anything sent anyway declined. There's a File Previews switch too, if you'd rather photos arrived as a file you choose to open instead of an image that just appears.

Commands

Type / in any chat and Chime's commands appear. The full set:

Mistype a command and Chime asks before sending it as a message, so a typo never leaks into the chat.

Guardians

A few people you trust, each holding one encrypted piece of your backup. Forget your PIN? They can let you back in. Lose your phone? Enough of them together can restore you on a new one. Offline for a while? They quietly carry your waiting messages, still sealed. No guardian can read anything alone, and none of it works without you starting it.

Set yours up in You > Profile. The exact maths of who-can-do-what is on the technical page.

Tor Mode

One switch, in You > Network, and your messages travel through the Tor network. Your internet provider, the coffee-shop WiFi, anyone watching the line: none of them can see who you're talking to. While it's on, Chime also turns off the connection types that would give your address away, so there's no quiet leak round the side.

It's off by default because it trades speed for invisibility. Flip it when that trade is worth it; Chime handles the rest.

Geo-fenced Groups

A group tied to a place and a clock. Set a fence on the map, set a lifespan, and when the time is up the group ends and wipes itself from every phone that was in it. Made for festivals, meets, and anything that shouldn't outlive the day.

Emergency Groups

For when something has gone wrong. Declare an emergency and a small group of your people get live beacons, a nearby-devices radar, and shared location, all working over the mesh even with no internet. If a phone is in range, word gets through.

Chime's own in-app keyboard for your most sensitive typing, so a third-party keyboard app never sees a single keystroke. It's early days, so there's always a one-tap switch back to your normal keyboard. Turn it on under You > Modules, or type /ksec in a chat.

No voice or video calls

Calls have never been on the roadmap. Real-time video needs fast, constant connections; Chime is built for the opposite world, where small sealed messages queue, wait, and hop between phones until they arrive. Push to Talk covers the quick word.

TRY INSTEAD  Jitsi Meet (open source, no account needed) · Proton Meet (end-to-end encrypted)

Large file sharing

Files are capped at 25 MB to keep chats lightweight and deliverable over every road Chime uses. Bigger things deserve a tool built for them.

TRY INSTEAD  SwissTransfer (free up to 50 GB, no account) · OnionShare (peer-to-peer over Tor, nobody in the middle; the most Chime-spirited option there is)