Introducing Private Chat
Privacy-First Communication, Built for You
In an era where online privacy is constantly under threat, I am excited to introduce Private Chat, a secure, real-time WebSocket-based private chat app designed with privacy as the foundation. Private Chat ensures that your conversations remain truly private and free from tracking, surveillance, and data collection.
Why Private Chat?
I believe that privacy is a fundamental right, not a luxury. Unlike conventional messaging platforms, Private Chat does not store messages, log activity, or rely on third-party services. Every message is encrypted in transit, ensuring that only the intended recipients can access the conversation.
How It Works
You select a nickname and a room and join. Every message you send is relayed to a backend server, encrypted using a secure WebSocket protocol. The server broadcasts your message to every participant in the room, leaving no logs, no trace, and storing no messages. When a participant leaves the room, the history is lost forever. Only new messages can be seen by the current chat participants.
Here is how the backend I have running on my Diamonds VPN Kubernetes cluster looks:
As you can see, zero logs. Just the server saying: I'm running here.
Initial Features
✅ Real-time messaging using secure WebSockets
✅ Private chat rooms with strict access control
✅ Zero storage of message content on the server
✅ Containerized deployment for easy backend setup with Docker
Privacy Highlights
Worth repeating to make it clear:
🔒 No Message Storage: Messages are only relayed between participants and never stored.
🚫 No Logs: Production mode disables all logging to prevent metadata leaks.
🔗 No Third-Party Services: Operates independently without reliance on external services.
📡 Encrypted Transmission: All communication is secured via encrypted WebSockets.
🛠 Open Source: Full transparency — anyone can inspect and verify how Private Chat handles data.
Use My Instance or Host Your Own
I've hosted an instance at chat.vpn.diamonds — you can use it, or you can host your own instance by deploying the frontend app to Vercel (for free) and the backend to your own server. The service is lightweight and should run well on small servers.
If you're a developer, you're welcome to contribute! Pull requests are open for enhancements and new features.
I'm also looking forward to engaging with mobile developers and enabling any frontend app to switch to different backend servers, similar to how Mastodon apps allow login to different instances.
It's Just a First Version
This app was coded in just 2 days, as you can see in the source code history, and therefore, it will have bugs and unexpected behavior. Nevertheless, I'm happy to launch it and put it in your hands for you to test and provide feedback.
The Next Features on the Roadmap Include:
- Optional notifications / sounds
- Optionally disabling service messages
- View room participants
- Invite users to speak in private
- Send temporary voice messages
- Send temporary files
- Send temporary images
- Preview links
- Highlight links, mentions (@username), and room names (#lobby)
- Edit messages
- Multiline messages
- Reply to specific messages
- Share chat
- Invite to chat
Join the Privacy Revolution
With Private Chat, you’re in control of your conversations. No tracking. No storage. No compromise.
Start using Private Chat today and experience true digital privacy. 🚀
