Frequently asked questions

No. Phones connect to each other directly over Bluetooth LE and local Wi-Fi. There are no servers involved at any point; Seklio works the same in airplane-mode Wi-Fi, on a shared network, or with no infrastructure at all.

A direct link reaches as far as Bluetooth or your local Wi-Fi network does. But messages don’t stop there: each phone relays them onward, so your real reach is the whole connected mesh; a message can hop through up to 7 phones (15 for broadcasts) to find its recipient.

Every direct and group message is end-to-end encrypted with well-studied primitives (X25519 key agreement, ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption, Ed25519 signatures). Phones that relay your messages only ever see ciphertext. And because there are no servers, there is no central place where metadata piles up.

None. There is no backend to send data to. The only thing that can ever leave your phone is an optional, encrypted diagnostics report that you create and send manually if you want to report a bug.

Yes. Your encrypted message is stored on your phone (and on phones that have a stake in delivering it) and handed over whenever a path to the recipient appears (for up to 7 days). Delivery is confirmed end-to-end, so your bubble tells you when it truly arrived.

Seklio is built around Bluetooth Low Energy, which is designed for all-day background use, and switches to Wi-Fi links when they’re available (faster and cheaper per byte). It’s comparable to other always-nearby apps, not to GPS-style drain.

No. Your identity is a cryptographic keypair generated on your device. You pick a handle (like @irem); that’s all anyone sees, and you can change it anytime.

No, real names are completely optional. Everyone sees only your handle. If you choose to add your real name, it’s shared end-to-end encrypted only with friends you’ve verified in person; it’s never broadcast to the network, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Yes. Android is in alpha on Google Play, in two steps: join the “Seklio Alpha Channel” Google Group, then install from the Play listing with the same Google account. Membership can take a while to reach Google Play, so if the listing says the app isn’t available yet, wait a bit and try again. The alpha APK is also downloadable directly from our GitHub Releases page, no group needed. iOS is in public beta on TestFlight. The two platforms speak the same open wire protocol, so they join the same mesh.

Circles are Seklio’s private groups: end-to-end encrypted, invite-only, and serverless like everything else. Invites are signed QR “slips” from the admin: scan one in person, or receive it in a chat. Only invited members hold the group key, so relaying phones can’t read anything. Anyone can join unlimited Circles, and every account can admin up to 2 at a time for free.

Messaging is free: chats, Circles, broadcasts, photos, replies, reactions — all of it. Managing Circles is free too: every account can be the admin of up to 2 Circles at the same time, with full admin powers. Premium removes that limit, for people who run many Circles at once. It comes as a lifetime unlock, a monthly plan with a 7-day free trial, or a yearly plan billed monthly where the store supports it. If premium ever lapses, you keep 2 managed Circles and nothing is deleted. One note: the sideloaded APK build can’t make purchases (there’s no Google Play billing on it), so it always runs the free tier.

Not by Seklio: there are no Seklio servers, and the app never uploads your chats anywhere itself. On iOS, your history is part of your phone’s normal device backup: if you back up to iCloud, your chats are included under your iCloud account’s protection and restored along with the rest of your data. Either way, nobody at Seklio can read, hand over, or mine your history.