If you’ve ever wanted to decentralise your messaging, Jack Dorsey‘s new Bitchat app might be just what you’re looking for. The Twitter co-founder announced the app, the product of a weekend spent learning “about bluetooth mesh networks, relays and store and forward models, message encryption models, and a few other things,” is currently available via TestFlight for iOS users.
Or, at least, it was. The beta has since been filled, but that bodes well for an eventual release of Bitchat, once it’s been in development for more than a handful of days. There’s no timeline on when (or if) this will turn into a full-fledged and permanent project, but outlets like CNBC are treating it as such.
Just for a Bitchat
As well they might. Bitchat is a peer-to-peer messaging service that doesn’t require internet access, sending its data via Bluetooth mesh networks. It’s designed to be a problem to spy on, with temporary identities, no accounts required to post, and encryption baked in everywhere. Dorsey’s app also boasts no servers or data collection.
my weekend project to learn about bluetooth mesh networks, relays and store and forward models, message encryption models, and a few other things.
bitchat: bluetooth mesh chat…IRC vibes.
TestFlight: https://t.co/P5zRRX0TB3
GitHub: https://t.co/Yphb3Izm0P pic.twitter.com/yxZxiMfMH2— jack (@jack) July 6, 2025
Many of the same features you’d expect from other messaging apps are present. Rooms, password-protected and not, @-mentions, and other standards are present, but messages are transmitted as anonymously as possible and disappear by default.
Future plans for Bitchat include transmission via WiFi Direct for greater range. Bluetooth protocols currently provide users with a range of approximately 300 metres, thanks to the app’s peer-to-peer relay system, but this will be extended.
It’s not immediately clear who Bitchat is for, but the usages are obvious. Encrypted messaging without reliance on servers would serve everyone, from basic users who value privacy and don’t wish to enrich advertisers to those organizing protest actions in authoritarian countries.
There’s also the potential for utter lawlessness on the app, since many of the key anonymising features also characterise the internet’s hive of scum and villany, 4Chan. It’ll all be in how users take to the product.
