
The only downside is that Briar requires round-the-clock background access to deliver messages to your devices. After installing the app, all there is to do is to provide a username, set up your password, and you’re good to go. We didn’t have to create an account or provide any personal information (like email address) to use the app. The registration-free and ad-free model simplifies the onboarding journey and smoothens users’ experience. There’s also a built-in “App Lock” that automatically locks the app after some minutes of inactivity. It’s an open-source app that boasts features like disappearing messages, end-to-end encryption, content filtering, a blog section (for creating blog posts or reading RSS feeds articles), and many more.īriar lets you choose a profile picture, modify the app’s theme, and customize text notifications and alerts. What Briar lacks in design, it makes up for in functionality. Therefore, if you decide to proceed with Signal, avoid sending confidential information and files on the app. But because the developers make no mention of any security or encryption protocol, we’d assume a third party can infiltrate messages. Tell the user to ensure their device’s Wi-Fi is enabled and not connected to any other network.


If a device or avatar is greyed out on the list, that means the app is unable to establish a connection with the user. Install Signal on your Android device, head to the “Available” section and the app will automatically connect to other nearby Signal users within a 60-100 meter radius. The app will scan for nearby devices for 30 seconds before it times out. On the next page, tap Scan For Devices to check for nearby devices using the Bluetooth Chat app. When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll need to set up your profile by providing a preferred display name, profile color, etc.Īfterward, grant the app access to your device’s storage and location when prompted. You don’t need an internet connection to register your device on the network, nor do you need to provide personal or contact information like email address, phone number, etc. Unlike other offline messaging apps that we tested, Bluetooth Chat works completely off-grid. The transmission distance of this app depends on the Bluetooth range of the connected devices, which is typically around 100 meters. The app creates a Bluetooth peer-to-peer network that allows connected devices to exchange texts and images. Bluetooth Chat ( Android)īluetooth Chat is also easy to use and provides internet-free messaging at zero cost. The app is available for free (on Android and iOS), but you’d have to put up with occasional pop-up ads during usage.

That is, you can send offline messages from an Android device to an iOS device and vice versa.

Bridgefy is also one of the few offline messaging apps that support cross-platform communication.
