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Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks
- IncreasePosts 1y agoIs this actual programmer output or is this just what Claude gives you with a certain prompt?
- uptown 1y agoBridgefy is another player in the sparse, offline messaging space.
- ramon156 1y agoNow someone build it on the AT protocol and call it bitchAT
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoLooks pretty interesting. From what I can see, it's a native IOS/MacOS app (SwiftUI). I don't see an Android version. Also seems pretty spartan, but it looks like it could be embedded in "friendlier" apps.
- encom 1y ago>Universal App For Apple only. In what way is this universal?
- 1ark 1y agoIt is Apple terminology for an app that supports both iPad and iPhone.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoAnd Mac. SwiftUI apps can often do both. I’m probably gonna rewrite my Bluetooth explorer app in SwiftUI. Doesn’t need any fancy UI.
- toast0 1y agoHey, could be worse. A universal Windows Mobile 10 app wouldn't run on Windows Phone 8 even though WP8 had many more installed devices than WM10.
- ajr0 1y agoI find this interesting, there was a briar app that was spoken about a few months ago that was only for android citing that iOS had issues [0] with apps running in background, wonder if/how this was solved here. Also, I have not seen unlicense before -- guess I'm one of todays lucky 10,000 [0] https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#will-there-be-an-ios-version-of-briar https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#will-t...
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoIOS/Apple Bluetooth is an interesting place. Backrounding is kinda klunky. I think it's deliberate, as that's a real security vector.
- vips7L 1y agoIsn't Briar all JVM? AFAIK that can't really run on iOS at all since Apple disallows foreign JITs; unless they compiled Briar to native.
- ckcheng 1y agoNo android but “can” be built? > protocol is designed to be platform-agnostic. An Android client can be built https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat?tab=readme-ov-file#android-compatibility https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat?tab=readme-ov-file#a...
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoAs long as it's Swift, I guess. The Protocols files seem "agnostic." I think the lower-level hardware files might need to be rewritten, though, so he's saying that an Android developer could write an app that incorporates the protocol. If I were an Android developer, though, I'd just use the Swift files as a requirements spec, and write it native.
- syntaxing 1y agoWhoa this is really neat. I’ve been trying to get into Meshtastic but it’s hard to convince others when you need special hardware. Would be super neat if Apple did something similar. Shouldn’t be too hard since the AirTags use the same idea? Would also be neat if there was a way to build a LoRA proxy to extend the range. I might give this a try with my meshtastic devices.
- eternityforest 1y agoI'm working on a project that uses the same kind of idea as the Bluetooth tracking tags. It's an Arduino library for mesh networking, that works over BLE and UDP, but it can also link to MQTT. An MQTT node routes the packets it sees to the appropriate topics, and subscribes to topics for all the channels local nodes want, so you should be able to talk to anyone anywhere via the gateway. The packet destination addresses are rolling codes, so you can't tell if someone's online just by watching their channel, at least not for more than an hour. And there's a web app that talks directly to the public MQTT broker, and it can do chat and sensor data. All payloads are Messagepack to make it easy to add new data types, and all packets are encrypted, authenticated, and timestamped to provide a bit of replay protection. Everything is purely symmetric crypto, trust is left to a higher layer or something out of band, so you there's no handshakes or connection state management overhead, aside from one announce packet per hour to make the MQTT gateways work. No LoRa, but the transports are modular and pluggable so you can easily add them. I just only have one LoRa Arduino node here so I haven't bothered writing a driver. I'm also working on a Python port for easy pip-installable bots and home automation stuff. https://github.com/EternityForest/LazyMesh# https://github.com/EternityForest/LazyMesh#
- syntaxing 1y agoSuper interesting! Leaving the transport layer as modular is definitely a great choice! I like the idea of MQTT because there’s a lot of methods of serving it. I’ve been in the middle of setting up a meshtastic MQTT mode to try it out.
- eternityforest 1y ago
- cmiller1 1y agoIs it Bit Chat or Bitch At?
- Izmaki 1y agoDepends if you're messaging your friends or your girls.
- esafak 1y ago"Area Codes".
- unixhero 1y agoOr like the old chat client BitchX
- shawnlower2 1y agoYes
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[dead]
- jrflowers 1y agoI’m assuming that it’s Bitch At since with a ~30ft range you’ll be able to see who you’re bitching at
- colordrops 1y agoNice double entendre for sure.
- brikym 1y agoBitch At. Same as Bitch Ute.
- lxgr 1y agoVery nice! Could this be published in the App Store, or does it use any APIs Apple considers off-limits? I'm regularly frustrated by modern phone's complete inabilities to allow any communication when outside of mobile network or Wi-Fi coverage, not even within the two large walled gardens. It would be so easy for Apple to extend iMessage to work peer-to-peer, at least between people that have already messaged each other before and while both screens are on. That's literally how AirDrop works, and having to send a "Notes" text back and forth is just silly.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoI'd much rather Apple allow running something like this (open source) myself rather than use their "just trust me bro" store.
- Tika2234 1y ago[dead]
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoI've never understood this argument. Apple spends billions of dollars vetting their store for high quality apps. You can't even verify the build you get off Github was compiled from the same posted source. As much as people want to be "leet" and run 3rd party software, it's inherently insecure and that's why Apple shuts it down.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago> Apple spends billions of dollars vetting their store for high quality apps. Rofl. And citation needed.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoYou obviously build it yourself. IMO ultimate solution is for Apple to curate some sort open source store where they vet the source and builds "in public".
- 1y ago
- rendx 1y agoThere's also https://github.com/meshenger-app/meshenger-android https://github.com/meshenger-app/meshenger-android for generic LAN (without groups/peer discovery).
- halfmatthalfcat 1y agoInteresting try but Bluetooth LE is a non-starter when talking about building a truly decentralized mesh network at scale. The range isn’t there to build a network unless its very tight (in distance). You need sub MHz and eventually cubesats to build something robust, everything else is a toy.
- eternityforest 1y agoThe big problem with BLE is the insane amounts of packet loss with extended advertising, even with perfect SNR many devices seem to just kind of not have the receive windows lined up right and drop 10% of packets. The range is perfectly good for a lot of applications where one might actually want to not use the internet, just not all of them.
- kragen 1y agoDropping 10% of packets sounds like a trivial problem to solve. That's not a range that requires fancy things like erasure coding or even SACK; it's easily handled by just retransmitting packets that don't get acknowledged.
- eternityforest 1y agoYou need to track individual subscribers at that point, which uses lots of ram and could use lots of airtime, heuristics like resending until you get 1 reply like Meshtastic don't work well. If there's receive window timing issues you can't assume two nodes right next two each other will get the same subset of packets most of the time. My solution is just to resend every message four times, and not bother with protocol layer reliability for BLE at all, the packet rate is low and all the acknowledgements use airtime anyway.
- kragen 1y agoThere are scalable reliable multicast protocol designs that don't require publishers to track subscriber lists, but you're right that the approach I suggested above would require that.
- DeepYogurt 1y agoMore of this please. Bring back peer to peer
- BluSyn 1y agoFYI on X there is a TestFlight link to try it: https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728 https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728 Surprised to see Jack pushing code himself. Love to see it.
- syntaxing 1y agoIs there a link to the TestFlight itself?
- joshuaturner 1y agohttps://testflight.apple.com/join/QwkyFq6z https://testflight.apple.com/join/QwkyFq6z
- Nicksil 1y agohttps://testflight.apple.com/join/QwkyFq6z https://testflight.apple.com/join/QwkyFq6z
- BluSyn 1y agoWasn’t sure if a random TestFlight link would be safe/wise to share, so shared original source.
- suck-my-spez 1y agoInterestingly only a few commits were written by his account. Almost all were from https://github.com/nothankyou1 https://github.com/nothankyou1
- jasonvorhe 1y agoHe doesn't use personal identifiers on any of his devices, afaik.
- suck-my-spez 1y agoI guess his commits were done on GitHub.com then?
- motohagiography 1y agothis looks great for most use cases. most interception has been ruled out by the simple protocol for rooms, where the remaining attack appears to be just to clone the users keys, where it's more viable to attack the phones than the protocol, which is the point. the spitball questions I would ask might be, a) how do you handle a theoretical timing attack where the time to respond to a room scan could yield whether a given device is a member of a known room, (the paralellism?) and b) does the GCM counter IV/nonce value cluster around rooms, so the counter for a given room will be in a shared range? not dealbreakers or anything, this is simple and cool for its purpose, but design consideration wise, what's the thinking on those scenarios?
- kyawzazaw 1y agoHow easy it is to use for non-technical people?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThis looks like a nerd’s tool, but I suspect we’ll start seeing more GUI-friendly versions, shortly.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- appleaday1 1y agowhy not just use meshtastic and you get longer range too?
- int_19h 1y agoMeshtastic requires a separate transceiver.
- Jotalea 1y agoThis is a really interesting app, but it is exclusive to Apple devices. There are other alternatives for Android, like https://github.com/glodanif/BluetoothChat https://github.com/glodanif/BluetoothChat but it is only for close distance chatting without any network other than Bluetooth, doesn't have encryption, and is not IRC-themed.
- btbuildem 1y agoLooks to be a little IRC-inspired with the usage/commands. Would be neat to have a lora network version, and have this run in a more of a sandbox/term environment instead of a locked-in iOS app. Wonder how many Claude Code tokens that would take...
- subscribed 1y agoYou don't need TK invent another transport protocol: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum
- dewey 1y ago> Looks to be a little IRC-inspired with the usage/commands. This is listed as a dedicated "feature" in the README: "IRC-Style Commands"
- monkaiju 1y agoAt first glance this seems like briar except only supports Bluetooth and is made by someone with a less than stellar privacy record. Its cool, but maybe more as a personal project of Jack's than something I'd want to use in the secure-context he's implying it'd be good at. Am I missing something?
- dbworku 1y agoEverything old is new again... Repo description reminds me of the Shortwave app from the 2010s. https://medium.com/@alonsoholmes/wtfbeacon-how-shortwave-works-993e9e6e332a https://medium.com/@alonsoholmes/wtfbeacon-how-shortwave-wor...
- alternatex 1y agoI mentioned elsewhere: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat Seems like people in this thread are inspired by this novel concept that isn't novel at all. FireChat was in fact used against dictatorial governments during protests in Iraq and Hong Kong. So it fits the aspired goal for the apps suggested here perfectly, and yet still failed as a product.
- brikym 1y ago"Can I get your bitch at?"
- gorfian_robot 1y agoI will Woof it to you
- seanlinmt 1y agoIs this similar to Briar? I reckon a cool feature would be the ability to create a poll. Use case? You're in the middle of a protest. Where to next?
- darkwater 1y ago> Use case? You're in the middle of a protest. Where to next? Hopefully, not in prison.
- glowiefedposter 1y ago[dead]
- sardine5 1y agoA bit different, as it's mainly for voice - but I made an app 'Murmur : Bluetooth Group Calls' - that lets you hold group voice calls and message via a mesh of Bluetooth LE connections. It's available on Android and iOS. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/murmur-bluetooth-group-calls/id1468540385 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/murmur-bluetooth-group-calls/i... Doesn't really get any downloads, so not sure there's much demand for this - but I use it with some shokz bone conducting headphones for talking to my wife when we're cycling (also for wrangling our two small girls)
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoHow's the range on BLE? I was looking at this app for exactly the use case you mentioned but was curious if it worked with varying distances on bike rides
- sardine5 1y agoIt's somewhat device dependant - but between her Pixel 6 and my Pixel 7 - if we've got line of sight and the handset's not being held to our body (so in a handlebar mount or saddle bag) - 50-75m? I've been victim to the recent Microsoft layoffs, so have a bit of time to work on it at the moment - looking at adding longer range CodedPhy support this week (though that would only be available on Android) It works best if there's 3 phones though - as it can route via the other if a link drops.
- roshin 1y agoCool technology, but what is the usecase? I can imagine traveling abroad without a sim and using it as described. But is it any better than using the cellular network (when you have access to it)?
- sardine5 1y agoI possibly live more remote than you do - but mobile data isn't really a thing (in the UK at least) you can rely on continuously when you're cycling, or visiting the supermarket and you've lost your partner near the cheese aisle...
- jusling 1y agoHow does this differ from FireChat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
- gorfian_robot 1y agogood question. but FireChat never took off for some reason(s).
- rtkwe 1y agoFirechat is defunct and hasn't been updated in ~7 years which is a pretty big issue.
- kragen 1y agoTechnical whitepaper: https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER.md https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER... Presumably that is the key to getting out of the Apple ghetto.
- Tepix 1y agoFrom the whitepaper: "bitchat implements a custom mesh networking protocol over BLE" I wonder why they didn‘t implement the BLE mesh networking standard released in 2017 by the Bluetooth SIG.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoThere are already several open source implementations, but the Bluetooth SIG standard only supports flood propagation. This is fine for managing a few hundred temperature sensors or lighting controls up to the building's floor concentrator, which is the main use case for this standard, but it is completely unsuitable for sending individual messages from user A to user B.
- kragen 1y agoFlooding does work for sending individual messages from user A to user B at a small enough scale, but it gets progressively less efficient as the network grows, and at some level it will collapse.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoFlooding works if there is not too much hops between the sender and the recipient. For indoor IoT, it is very rare to have more than 3 hops and the data rates are extremely low and messages are just few bytes (on/off light, temperature). It would only take 4 people at 5 hops apart trying to exchange photos of less than a megabyte to completely saturate a network of hundred devices.
- 1y ago
- max_ 1y agoIs this the real Jack Dorsey? I see he even has commit/push access to repos at Block
- jdmoreira 1y agoIt is
- moneywaters 1y agoI’ve been toying with a concept inspired by Apple’s Find My network: Imagine a decentralized, delay-tolerant messaging system where messages hop device-to-device (e.g., via Bluetooth, UWB, Wi-Fi Direct), similar to how “Find My” relays location via nearby iPhones. Now add a twist: • Senders pay a small fee to send a message. • Relaying devices earn a micro-payment (could be tokens, sats, etc.) for carrying the message one hop further. • End-to-end encrypted, fully decentralized, optionally anonymous. Basically, a “postal network” built on people’s phones, without needing a traditional internet connection. Works best in areas with patchy or no internet, or under censorship. Obvious challenges: • Latency and reliability (it’s not real-time). • Abuse/spam prevention. • Power consumption and user opt-in. • Viable incentive structures. What do you think? Is this viable? Any real-world use cases where this might be actually useful — or is it just a neat academic toy?
- littlecranky67 1y agoNeat academic toy - unless you can predict why a large-scale, long-term internet outage should happen. Aside from that, most of what your concept includes (but uses Internet instead of BT) exists with Nostr+Lightning.
- hashworks 1y agoThere have been incidents where governments disabled routing to specific services or the Internet entirely to hinder demonstrations.
- littlecranky67 1y agoThat is why I added "large-scale" and "long-term"
- derhuerst 1y agoto give a example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932021_Jammu_and_Kashmir_lockdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932021_Jammu_and_... i'm not sure if in this case "only" the 4G network was shut off, but IMO it still serves as a good reminder of when such an event might happen again. also: https://ooni.org/reports/ https://ooni.org/reports/
- rlt 1y agoThe coolest thing about this is apparently it’s written by Jack Dorsey, billionaire founder of Twitter/Square. https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728 https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728 Cool to see he still gets his hands dirty in code.
- nelsonfigueroa 1y agoYeah I noticed this too! The profile picture looked familiar.
- b33f 1y agoIt's not though, it's written by someone called nothankyou1 https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat/graphs/contributors https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat/graphs/contributors
- greyface- 1y agoThe commits, viewed outside of GitHub, have: Author: jack <no@no.no> He used a bogus `user.email` git config value, which GitHub matched to the nothankyou1 account.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pedan 1y ago[dead]
- tschillaci 1y agoThis is a really exciting project! I love how it makes each message feel more valuable, like modern-day letters, but more convenient.
- careful_ai 1y ago[dead]
- geek_at 1y agoTitle should include "for the apple eco system"
- po1nt 1y agoIf we could bridge over Meshtastic, this would be so good.
- xvilka 1y agoToo bad it's not cross-platform which makes any real use pretty limited.
- trklausss 1y agoThis particular application isn't, but at the end of the README you get a section on how to port to Android, and the protocol is open as well. So it's a matter of investing the effort on your side.
- tonnydourado 1y agoAnyone else read it as "Bitch at"?
- thinkingemote 1y agoIs the Web Bluetooth API good enough to do mesh stuff? So we could have localhost or offline websites doing this.
- ManuelKiessling 1y agoFunny, I had a similar idea in 2010, from which nothing followed of course: https://imgur.com/a/VWiDBO3 https://imgur.com/a/VWiDBO3
- IshKebab 1y agoThis is one of those ideas that everyone has had.
- PeterStuer 1y agoReminds me of nntp, from back when the Internet wasn't 'always on' or fully connected.
- lproven 1y agoNNTP is alive and well, as is USEnet. https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/30/usenet_revival/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/30/usenet_revival/
- t43562 1y agoThis is something I've wanted for ages. I go to some event with the family - in London for example or to an airshow - and there's a huge crowd for one reason or another which overloads the mobile network and makes your phone useless. You can lose people who are just a few metres away. I am glad it's public domain - I don't think I really want to invest any effort in getting non-techy people to try and use something that might go away one day and be irreplacable. OTOH, I need Android as well so....
- brador 1y ago[flagged]
- mistercheph 1y agoManagement-tier grasping at technical language, reads like CSI dialogue.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wjholden 1y agoVery cool, I've often thought that such a short-range chat would be fun on an airplane. Not practical, but it could be neat to chat with the group in the air.
- FerkiHN 1y agoWhen will the Android release be ready?
- christophilus 1y agoI read that name as “bitch at”. I thought maybe it was one of those GPS collars for finding your runaway dog.
- delbronski 1y agobruh...
- kinow 1y agoI didn't read it like that immediately, but I noticed there was something that my brain recognized and asked me to look at it again. I wondered for a second if it could be filtered in some corporate filters (emails/servers/etc.).
- brightbeige 1y ago“Did not work at all for my male dog. One star”
- avtar 1y agoI assumed it was a subtle nod to an old irc client https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitchX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitchX
- fluidcruft 1y agoSame but I thought it was a place to yell and complain at people
- rofiko 1y ago.
- molszanski 1y agoI've tried a couple of apps like that with use case of communicating during festivals with next-to-none wifi/cell service with a big group of people. None of them worked. Fingers crossed for this one
- rtkwe 1y agoCheckout Meshtastic nodes you can get them pretty cheaply at 30-40 USD each and get way better ranges than BTLE.
- molszanski 1y agoThank you!
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoAs much as I like the idea of people working on peer-to-peer networks, delay tolerant network, if I'm within Bluetooth range, it's quicker to chat with the person I'm talking to than to go through a messaging app. That technology is interesting, but it is probably not a good usecase. There are potentially lots of interesting things you could do with smart watches and bike computers, such as uploading activities without direct connection to a phone or sharing routes with nearby participants, etc. Use cases where you may not necessarily have a phone or adequate network coverage.
- pizzafeelsright 1y agoI would agree although I can see a few applications of the tech that could be helpful. Consider if at a large conference where enough participants are able to create a mesh and then leave geo tagged messages and send beyond BT range. If there was a way to piggyback on top of the airtag network we could do a lot more.
- elric 1y agoWe can communicate in more ways than just with words. Would be great to FINALLY have a sensible, low-friction, secure way to transfer files to people. It's 2025 and that's still not a solved problem.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y agoYou probably don't need a decentralised, delay-tolerant network to send a photo to the person in front of you. It's even very likely that this will be much less efficient than a direct Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection or an AirDrop. What would be the use case? Send the picture to someone at the other end of the lecture theatre? It's likely that there would be a phone network or Wi-Fi available. A crisis or emergency situation where networks are down? There isn't much population density or movement to propagate the data. This debate is not new, many teams have worked on wireless ad hoc networks, some with very encouraging results. The real problem is what the use cases are. That's why I personally think that the use case should be related to travel, transport, sport or vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Situations involving movement and loss of connectivity.
- user9999999999 1y agobitch@
- HumblyTossed 1y agoI would love to see phone manufacturers start working on add LoRa to phones.
- thunkshift1 1y agoWho is nothankyou1? That guy is the real developer, dorsey just added some nonsense commits like a true manager.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Fokamul 1y agoAs a fun project, why not. But this is just another problem which can be solved by radio bought from aliexpress. No wait, let's reinvent the wheel again :) In case of war or something, internet is down, decentralized Bluetooth messaging app is your last problem. IRL you will be using unencrypted radio, yes doesn't make sense. But already proven in the UA war. Try using encrypted radio on the frontline and you will get suicide drones or artillery shell on your position, pretty quickly ;-)
- catchcatchcatch 1y ago[dead]
- bad_haircut72 1y agorelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt Scuttlebutt is another decentralized peer to peer messaging platform Since its so niche people should probably collaborate to get one of these solutions out into adoption. Coding stuff is super fun though...
- rightbyte 1y agoIt took me like 12h to see the wordplay in the name.
- alexnewman 1y agoBe cool if he added reed Solomon to do raid over the packets and send the replicas through multiple routes
- scirob 1y agohope this does well. We see people trying again and again like FireChat or Berty it seems that it works for a bit with some devices but then Apple & Google make updates and the app dies. In general mobile app development seems to be very maintanence heavy
- franciscojs 1y agoLooks like we have a new mesh comms solution every two weeks or so.
- jdelman 1y agoMy wife and I have been using Berkanan (an iOS app) for many years for this purpose. It's not very good - unlike literally every other chat app, it presents conversations in reverse chronological order, and the interface is janky. But it gets the job done when there's no WiFi (airplanes, though this is becoming less of a problem) or cell service (crowded venues).
- felishiagreen12 1y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 1y agoBest name since expertsexchange.com and penisland.net !
- subscribed 1y agoTherapistFinder might want a word
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- johnnyfiveplus 1y agoI really don't see the relevance of this app. We already know that Bluetooth (BLE) is short range.... so is this equivalent to speaking to people a hundred feet away from you in an encrypted manner? So use case is only for protests I assume?
- roadtoswe 1y agoI'm relatively new to programming and aware of who Jack Dorsey is, but isn't this quite impressive for a single programmer to build?
- imcritic 1y agoWhy such a rude name "BitchAt"? At what?
- rtkwe 1y agoBitChat.
- entriesfull 1y agoBoggles my mind how we all have cellphones capable of forming a massive (global?) wireless mesh network that can't be shutoff/censored (without jamming). Get rid of ISPs. Get rid of all these garbage social media (government honeypots) platforms that leak all your data every other weak. Use Zero-knowledge proofs for authentication into distributed web apps. Use BitTorrent file system to distribute data to prevent a single point of failure where all your data is leaked. I could go on and on.
- epynonymous 1y agoi thought during the hong kong protests they used firechat, never heard of bridgefy: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/jack-dorsey-working-on-bluetooth-messaging-app-bitchat/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/jack-dorsey-working-on-blu...
- k310 1y agoI can't get bluetooth to reliably airdrop files from one room to the next. I have to do windmills to coax a transfer. No other BT devices in between to mesh.
- wkat4242 1y agoMeh Apple only. Non starter in Europe. But perhaps I could give briar another try.
- shreyasonline 1y agoOops! https://blog.technitium.com/2015/05/technitium-bit-chat-released.html https://blog.technitium.com/2015/05/technitium-bit-chat-rele... I had released that 10 yrs ago lol.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y agoThis looks nice, but isn't this just a duplicated effort to make the subsets of the Reticulum network? https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/ https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/
- Reqozement 1y ago[dead]
- serval_may 1y agoThe serval project had worked on a similar app but now using Wi-Fi. https://github.com/servalproject/batphone https://github.com/servalproject/batphone
- _fzslm 1y agoImo any kind of p2p mobile app is DOA without background activity on iOS. But i'm also firmly in conviction that p2p is the future, so i don't know how we get there. regulators getting on Apple's ass again?
- sugarangela 1y ago[flagged]
- jackmalpo 1y agolet's convert this one to kotlin multiplatform...
- rtkwe 1y agoWhy Bluetooth which has pretty bad range when most phones have a wifi module built in? Is there not a mode on the module that could function similarly?
- koinedad 1y agoFor days I’ve been reading this bit chat…today I finally noticed the pun
- danowano 1y ago[dead]
- aganzeeliud 1y ago[dead]
- anonymousiam 1y agoIt seems to me that one could make use of the "Find My" BLE network to create a similar network.
- LoveMortuus 1y agoI know it's supposed to be BitChat, but once you notice BitchAt, it's kind of difficult to unsee it...
- JonnyReads 1y agoI don't get the hype around this. No one would be talking about it if it was released by someone who wasn't a billionaire
- baobun 1y agoCare for some more constructive criticism?
- jahsome 1y agoI'll ask more directly: What's the use case and/or value proposition for the average person? I've heard about it a few times over the last 24 hours, and I'm relatively off social media, so that to me indicates a considerable buzz. But the only thing that gets headlines is "Jack did a thing!" And the readme is primarily jargon. I can't speak for GP, but it's not clear to me _why_ it's a Really Big Deal.
- theultdev 1y agoBluetooth mesh chats were quite popular and effective during the Hong Kong protests. Aside from protests, I'd also say they could be useful during festivals and other events where mobile networks can get quite congested. Eventually fragments of groups will pass within range, forwarding messages to the rest, useful for coordinating rendezvous. If built into an app for the event, it would be even more effective.
- ryanisnan 1y agoThis is super neat! I love tech that expands beyond the internet. I have a strong feeling that this kind of technology plays a very important, but limited job in our future.
- jcon321 1y agoWhat's the usecase for this? Texting your classmates right next to you when wifi is down and you didnt pay your phone bill? It requires peers to be running bitchat. So is this only going to be useful if everyone has bitchat installed?
- theultdev 1y ago- hiking - protests - festivals / events - remote communities details are in other comments in this thread.
- oVerde 1y agoThis is my very youth toy project that never came to be, always dreamed of something this local when I used to be more at festivals as an introvert and stuff, good times, and awesome to see someone actually was able to pull it of.
- Melatonic 1y agoAnybody know when the next batch of beta invites goes out or how to get one ?
- Techrecovery 1y ago[dead]
- wqerty 1y ago[dead]
- e___r___qwerty 1y ago[dead]