About
A small messenger for people you actually know.
We built LockerChat because we wanted somewhere quieter to talk to a small group. Not a feed, not a social graph, not a marketing surface.
Why
Most messengers solve for scale. They want everyone you've ever exchanged a phone number with on the same graph, talking to as many of them as possible. That's a fine business. It isn't what we want from a chat app.
LockerChat is built around a small social shape. You don't show up in a directory. There's no contact-book sync. There's no phone-number lookup. You sign up with a username and talk to the people you choose to talk to.
Message bodies, attachment payloads, group topics, and avatars are encrypted end-to-end. The server sees ciphertext only. Some routing metadata (who's in which group, when messages were sent) is held in plaintext today because the protocol uses it; we're working to shrink that surface further. Encryption keys live on your devices. The full threat model and what we collect is published in plain markdown on the privacy page.
What it is, and isn't
Is
- · A small, focused private messenger
- · End-to-end encrypted by default
- · No phone number, no email, no directory
- · Multi-device, with linked-device codes
- · An open protocol; the spec publishes at launch
- · Self-hostable
Isn't
- · A free-for-all social network
- · Trying to onboard everyone you know
- · Ad-supported or selling your data
- · Promising metadata-free routing (it can't)
- · A drop-in replacement for your current group chat
- · Done. It's still in active development
Status
None of the clients are open to the public yet. Check back soon at locker.chat.
Web app: in progress. Not public yet.
Android: in progress. Public APK pending.
iOS: in progress. We're working through Apple Developer enrollment and EAS Mac build provisioning.
Server: open protocol, C++17 / Boost.Beast / Postgres. The protocol spec and self-host instructions ship with the project once the public release is cut.
Read the security model
We try to be specific about what we protect, and what we don't. Read it before you trust it.