When the internet stops, your messages don't.
Yapmesh sends messages, photos and voice notes straight from your phone to the phones around you. No internet. No SIM. No account. Free.
Works on Android 8.1 and newer, including older phones. iPhone is not ready yet.
How it works
Three things happen, and you do none of them
Your phone notices the phones near it
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the ones already in your pocket. Nothing to set up, no code to type, no network to join.
Your message hops from phone to phone
If your friend is not close enough, someone else's phone carries it for you, sealed shut, until it reaches them. They never see what is inside.
It arrives, and you are told honestly
One tick means it is still with you. Two means it landed. If nothing can carry it, Yapmesh says so instead of pretending.
What you can do
Everything you already do in a chat app
It looks and works like the app you use every day. The difference is what it does not need.
Chat, share photos, send voice notes
Type, reply to a message, react to it, send a picture or hold the button and speak. Everything you send is locked so only the person you sent it to can open it.
Send a file to everyone in the room
Drop a file in and every phone nearby gets a copy. The more phones already have it, the faster the next one gets it. A 5 MB file crossed by Bluetooth alone in under three minutes on our test phones.
Make a group that works without signal
A class, a ward, a work crew. You can see exactly who has received each message and who has read it, person by person.
Call for help with one long press
An SOS lights up every phone running Yapmesh nearby, and those phones pass it on for a day. It is not a call to the emergency services, but it reaches the people who are actually close to you.
Give the app to the person next to you
No app store, no internet. Your phone hands them the app over its own hotspot; they scan two codes and they are in.
Where it helps
For the days the network lets you down
The internet is switched off
It happens more than most people think, and phones keep working when it does. Yapmesh links them to each other instead of to a tower.
After an earthquake or a flood
Towers fail first and they fail together. Yapmesh needs none of them, and an SOS travels on from phone to phone for a whole day.
In a crowd
A stadium, a festival, a pilgrimage. Everyone's phone is fighting for the same tower. Yapmesh gets stronger the more phones there are, not weaker.
At school and on campus
Yapmesh started in a classroom with no Wi-Fi. Share notes, pictures and voice with the room, and nobody pays for data.
At the office or on site
Some files are not supposed to leave the building. A group can be tied to your premises, so the documents stay there and a phone that walks out loses the key.
Where there is no coverage at all
A village, a valley, a ship, a mine. Your message waits and travels with whoever moves, and it arrives when they do.
Your side of it
There is nobody in the middle
No account, ever
No phone number, no email, no password, nothing to sign up for. Your phone makes a key when you first open the app, and that key is you.
We collect nothing
There is no server for your messages to pass through, so there is nothing for anyone to hand over, sell, or lose. Not even a count of how many people use it.
Free, with no catch
No adverts, no paid tier, no trial. The app is free and the code is published so anyone can check what it does.
Get it
Two ways to start
Download it
One file, straight from us. Android will ask you to allow the install; that is normal for an app that is not from the store.
The first release-signed build is not published yet. The builds on our desk are signed with a development key and must not be installed from strangers. When the release exists, this box will show the file, its SHA-256 and the signing-key fingerprint, and the app's About screen will show the same fingerprint.
Get it from a friend
If they already have Yapmesh, they can pass it to your phone with no internet at all. Their phone makes a hotspot, you scan two codes, and it installs.
Free. Android 8.1 and newer, older 32-bit phones included. iPhone: we are working on it. It is not available yet.
Questions
The things people ask first
Do I need internet at all?
No. Not to install it from a friend's phone, not to set it up, and not to use it. If you do have internet it will use that too, but it never needs it.
How far does it reach?
One hop is about a room or a building, sometimes more outdoors. But a message can jump across several phones, and it can also ride in someone's pocket while they walk. So in practice: as far as people go.
Does it use my data or my credit?
No. It talks over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi directly between phones, which costs nothing. The only exception is if you choose to send a stuck message as a text, which uses one or more ordinary SMS.
Can other people read my messages?
No. A message is locked to the person you sent it to before it leaves your phone. The phones that carry it along the way cannot open it, and neither can we, because there is no we in the middle.
What about my battery?
It keeps Bluetooth and Wi-Fi looking for nearby phones while it is open, which does use power. We have not measured a full day honestly yet, so we are not going to give you a number we made up.
Is it finished?
No, and we say so plainly. It works today between real phones, and there is a page listing exactly which parts have been tested on real hardware and which have only been tested in code.
Evaluating Yapmesh for an organisation?
There is a detailed page with the transport ladder, the cryptography, a comparison against Briar, Bridgefy, Berty, Meshtastic, Signal and WhatsApp, and a source for every number.