Chitchatter
Logo provided by @ramyashreeshetty
Chitchatter is a free (as in both price and freedom) communication tool. Designed to be the simplest way to connect with others privately and securely, it is:
- Fully open source (licensed under GPL v2)
- Peer-to-peer
- Whenever possible, otherwise a TURN server is used to ensure reliable peer connection
- End-to-end encrypted (via WebRTC)
- Ephemeral
- Message content is never persisted to disk on either the client or server
- Decentralized
- No API server required. Chitchatter works completely without an API server - all that's required for basic functionality is availability of GitHub for static assets, and public WebTorrent and TURN relay servers for establishing peer-to-peer communication. An optional API server is available to provide enhanced connectivity features, but users can always choose to use Chitchatter without it.
- Embeddable
- Self-hostable
Chitchatter uses Vite. The secure networking and streaming magic would not be possible without Trystero. File transfer functionality is powered by secure-file-transfer.
Status
How to use it
Open https://chitchatter.im/ and join a room to start chatting with anyone else who is in the room. By default, room names are random UUIDs that are generated client-side. A more readable "Passphrase" option (four random words and a short random suffix) is also available. In either case, the room name is the only thing protecting a public room, so anyone who learns it can join; use a private room (which adds a password) for sensitive conversations. To privately communicate with someone, it is recommended to join one of these randomly-generated rooms and share the URL (via the "🔗" button at the top of the page) to whomever you wish to communicate with via a secure medium of your choosing (such as Burner Note or Yopass). Your user name will be presented to you, and it would be good to share that with who you will be chatting with beforehand so they know they're talking to you.
No API server required: Chitchatter works completely without any API server or backend infrastructure. All communication happens directly between your browser and other users' browsers. While an optional API server is available for enhanced connectivity features, you can always use Chitchatter without it.
Features
- Multiple peers per room (limited only by the number of peer connections your browser supports).
- Public and private rooms.
- Video and audio chatting.
- Screen sharing.
- Direct messaging.
- File sharing:
- Unlimited file size transfers.
- Files are encrypted prior to sending and decrypted by the receiver (the key is the room name).
- Embedding into other web apps via
iframe.
- Markdown support via
react-markdown.
- Includes support for syntax highlighting of code.
- Conversation backfilling from peers when a new participant joins.
- Multiline message support (hold
shift and press enter).
- Dark and light themes.
- Automatic peer verification via client-side public-key cryptography.
Anti-features
- Messages are never persisted to disk. When you leave a peer room, messages are cleared from memory and cannot be retrieved.
- Chitchatter is an entirely client-side communication app. It uses public WebTorrent servers to establish peer connections and TURN relay servers when direct peer-to-peer connections cannot be established, but there is no Chitchatter API server.
- No analytics, tracking, or telemetry of any kind.
- This is a community-driven and unfunded project that makes no money. The users come first and there is no corporate influence or financial interest involved.
Why another chat app?
There is no shortage of user-friendly chat apps available, but they rely on a central service to facilitate communication. It is difficult to trust these central services, as commercial interests and government pressure can compel service operators to work against the best interest of the users. Even when user data is handled in good faith by service operators, the possibility remains that encrypted data held at rest may be decrypted against the user's will.
Chitchatter designs around these risks with a web mesh architecture. There is no central service operator that stores or potentially mishandles communication data. Some services are required to establish an initial connection between peers, but otherwise the app uses direct peer-to-peer communication for everything. Any services that are used by Chitchatter have no association with the project and are publicly available for all to use.
Use cases
Chitchatter offers a private and secure solution for:
- Organizing groups of people, such as unions or political movements
- Conveniently moving text or data from one device to another
- Video chatting with friends and family across operating systems (such as Android and iOS)
- IT troubleshooting via screen sharing
- Livestreaming
- Sharing sensitive information such as passwords
- Much more!
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
