Messages carried device to device

Built for where the network isn’t.

A messenger for the places your phone gives up. A festival where nobody has bars. A basement. A canyon. It runs on Hop, where a message is built to travel device to device instead of through a carrier.

Ask for a beta invite See exactly where it is

Not in any app store. Closed beta, iPhone only, and Android hasn’t been built.

The Grit Chat conversation list with three conversations. Each row leads with a person's name, then the last message sent, then their shortened address in a monospace face, and on the right a small route graphic reading two hops with a tick.
Three conversations, three real deliveries. Names lead; the address is demoted iPhone 17 Pro simulator, iOS 26.5

What it does today

A real messenger, not a protocol demo with a chat window bolted on.

  • Direct messages

    One to one, sealed end to end.

  • Group channels

    With invites and moderation.

  • Photos

    Sent at a size a bad connection can carry.

  • Voice notes

    Typing in a dust storm is optimistic.

  • Location

    Where you are, to people you chose.

  • QR contact swap

    You add someone by showing them a code.

  • Offline history

    Readable with no signal at all.

  • A route on every message

    The path it took to reach you.

No phone number. No account. No server that can read your messages.

Every message shows its route

A hop count is real information, so it sits under every message. These are the actual states, drawn the way the app draws them.

  • delivered via 2 hops
  • 3 hops to reach you
  • carried by 2 peers, not confirmed
  • accepted, nobody carrying it yet
  • not sent

Shape carries the meaning before colour does, so it survives dust, low sun and colourblindness. Every hop today is through a relay, not a phone reaching another phone.

No other messenger can tell you this, because no other messenger has anything to tell you. The path was always the same server.

A conversation with Rosa Ibarra in the Grit Chat app. One sent message reads "At the gate now, walking north past the lantern line." Underneath it a small route graphic shows a dot, an arrow, a circle holding the numeral two, an arrow and a tick, beside the words "delivered via 2 hops".
A real delivery, confirmed at two relay hops. No other messenger can show you this iPhone 17 Pro simulator, iOS 26.5

The places that break messengers

Every messenger you already use assumes a tower. Take the tower away and they are a list of conversations you cannot continue.

Fifty thousand people on a dry lake bed share about as many bars as they do showers. A canyon wall does not care how new your phone is.

Three people stand in silhouette around a small lantern at a campsite on a dry desert lake bed at night. Two dome tents and a fabric shade structure on poles stand beside them, under a deep blue sky full of stars.
A camp on the playa at night. Out here the only signal is whatever you brought with you.
A close, almost abstract view of pale alkali dust and grit driven by wind across dark ground at night.
Alkali dust, driven by wind. The playa is made of the stuff, which is where the name comes from.

Where it is, honestly

There is no radio yet. That is the headline.

Nothing is discovered automatically and nothing reaches a nearby phone directly. It is not mesh delivery, and we are not going to call it that.

Proven

A physical iPhone reached a second, independent node through a relay, delivery confirmed and the hop count read off the device.

Not proven

Radio discovery. Two handsets talking to each other. Android, which has never been built. Channels work but need an SDK release that does not exist yet.

Read the source See what is proven

Two small figures stand far apart on a flat desert playa at night, under stars. One is lit by the warm amber glow of the phone screen they are holding.
Two people, some distance, one phone lighting a face. Today a relay still sits between them.
A vast cracked alkali flat stretches to a distant horizon under a deep indigo sky at late dusk. A single point of amber light shines in the extreme distance.
Late dusk on the flat, and one amber light a long way off. Somebody is out there.

Want it on your phone?

It is a closed beta on iPhone. Tell us what you have and where you would use it.

Ask for a beta invite