If you’re curious about what Twitter’s creator Jack Dorsey has been engaged in following his establishment of Bluesky, he has actually been focused on a project aimed at providing offline communication via Bluetooth patterns. This week on X, he unveiled Bitchat, a Bluetooth mesh chat application.
Currently in a TestFlight beta phase, he mentioned that the app is under review for release in the App Store. The distinct aspect of this app is its capability to allow users to communicate securely through Bluetooth connectivity, meaning you don’t have to be concerned about having a cellular signal. As long as you’re within approximately 300 meters of another user, communication is possible.
The primary features of Bitchat in its present form are:
– **Offline Communication:** Operates without the internet via Bluetooth mesh networking
– **E2E Encryption:** All communications are secured with Curve25519 + AES-GCM
– **Extended Range:** Messaging peers over distances exceeding 300m
– **Favorites System:** Store-and-forward messages for favorites indefinitely
– **Mentions:** Notify specific users using @nickname
– **Rooms:** Ability to create #rooms for discussions based on topics
– **Password Rooms:** Secure rooms protected by passwords and AES encryption.
Dorsey also disclosed the app’s privacy attributes. Importantly, Bitchat does not gather data — it generates a new ID for each session, and you can triple tap the Bitchat logo to instantly erase all data.
While this doesn’t seem to be the primary reason Dorsey developed the app, I truly believe that it will be the optimal method to communicate with friends and family on a plane or in other locations where cellular connectivity is poor.
After all, at times you just want to quickly share something without sending a text, and none of the existing messaging apps have been able to meet that need for me. Consequently, iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and other conventional chat applications aren’t always the most reliable choice.
