DarkWire for Android

Report a problem, straight from the app.

• New: About → Report a problem opens the form on darkwire.nl, with DarkWire and its version already filled in. Report a bug or a security issue, or ask a question; no account needed.

Open-source licenses: every library DarkWire uses, with its full license text.

• New: About → Open-source licenses lists every library inside DarkWire, with who makes it and its full license text, as their licenses ask.
• The About screen points to the Community servers page on this website, where people run DarkWire for the web for anyone without an app yet (iPhone, Mac).
• The About screen mentions the new portable DarkWire for Windows, and that DarkWire for Windows is tested on Windows 10 too.

The update window no longer offers a DarkWire Pulse update you've just installed.

• After you installed a DarkWire Pulse update from DarkWire's update window and came back, the window still offered the same update. Now it checks what's installed every time you come back to it.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website: DarkWire for Windows, and locking a computer's data with a password.

Contacts that can no longer be reached are marked, and DarkWire stops trying them.

• When a contact's notification address no longer exists (for example, they removed their notification app or cleared DarkWire in their browser), DarkWire stops trying to wake their device. The contact gets a red mark in Contacts, and you see "Can't reach this contact" when you tap them and in their chat. Your messages wait, and go out as soon as they can be reached again.
• Until now DarkWire kept trying such a contact forever, every few minutes and sometimes every few seconds.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website.

Reach contacts who use DarkWire in a web browser.

• New: your contacts can now also use DarkWire in a web browser: DarkWire for the web, which anyone can host on a server of their own. DarkWire reaches them like any other device.
• The push that wakes a contact's device now goes out as text, because Chrome, Edge and other browsers built on Chromium drop anything else. Update DarkWire on all your devices, and ask your contacts to update too: DarkWire 0.20.196 and older can't read these pushes, so it may not get your messages until it's updated.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website: DarkWire in a browser.
• Works together with this version and newer on your contacts' phones, DarkWire Desktop 0.18.56 and newer, and DarkWire for the web.

Link your computer to your phone, and a destruct code that wipes DarkWire at the lock screen.

• New: link your computer to your phone. On DarkWire Desktop, choose Link to your phone and scan its QR code with Settings → Linked computer → Link a computer. Your computer then shows your chats, contacts and groups, and you can carry on there. Your phone stays in charge: your profile and its key stay on the phone, and the computer does everything through it. Calls, backups and Transfer stay on the phone. You can unlink from either side.
• New: a destruct code, under App protection. It's a second PIN or password. Entered at the lock screen instead of your own, it deletes the groups where you're the admin, leaves the others, asks each contact to remove you, deletes your automatic backups and wipes everything. DarkWire then opens empty, as if just installed. It can't be undone.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website: linking a computer, and app protection with the destruct code.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.20.162 and newer on your contacts' phones. A linked computer needs DarkWire Desktop 0.18.43 or newer.

See when your message is read, confirm a contact with one tap, and move your profile between your phone and a computer.

• New: read receipts. One ✓ means your message arrived, ✓✓ means it was read. Only for text messages. "Send read receipts" in Settings is on by default and works both ways: switch it off and you send none and see nobody's ✓✓.
• New: Confirm. Someone who added you with your code, without you scanning theirs, can message you but not call you. Until now, confirming them meant scanning their code; now it's one tap on Confirm, in the chat or in the contact menu.
• Transfer works with a computer too, and on every phone, also without NFC. After Send or Receive, choose Scan QR code (the computer shows one) or Paste code. Between two phones, holding them together (NFC) works as before.
• A Transfer code pasted into Connect to someone or a group's Join now tells you it's a Transfer code and where to use it.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.20.162 and newer on your contacts' phones, for chats, calls and groups. Read receipts need this version on both sides.

Connecting with someone new is much faster now, and DarkWire has a desktop app for Linux.

• Fixed: the very first connection with a new contact could take about 20 seconds before anything got through. Your phone answered their connection and, at the same moment, started one of its own to fetch their profile picture, and the two got in each other's way. Now it takes a few seconds.
• Works with DarkWire for Linux, the new desktop app. You find it on the Download page.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.20.162 and newer on your contacts' phones, for chats, calls and groups.

Share your QR code as a picture, or your code as text, through any other app. Scan a QR code from a picture, and join a group by pasting its code.

• New: Share. On Connect to someone, on the screen where you reshare a contact, and on a group's share screen, tap Share and choose Picture (your QR code as an image) or Code (your code as text), then send it with any other app, such as WhatsApp, Telegram or email. Invitation-only groups can't be shared this way.
• New: Scan from picture. If the QR code arrives on the same phone DarkWire is on, the camera can't scan it, so pick the picture from your gallery instead. You find it under Scan their QR on Connect to someone, and under Join on the Groups tab.
• Groups now have a code as text too. On the Groups tab, Join lets you scan with the camera, scan from a picture, or paste the group's code. Pasting works even with the rest of the message still around the code, and the paste field on Connect to someone recognises a group code as well.
• None of this goes through darkwire.nl. The shared message has a link to the Download page, but only for people who don't have DarkWire yet; connecting never depends on it.
• The Debug tools screen in Settings is gone. It was only there for testing.
• The About screen has the same new text as the Info page on this website.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.20.162 on your contacts' phones, for chats, calls and groups.

Groups of up to 100 people, without a server. And if you want them, automatic backups to a folder you choose.

• New: groups. A group works without a server, just like a chat between two people: your message goes from your phone straight to every other member, each over its own end-to-end encrypted connection. Everything that happens in a group is signed by the person who did it, so every phone checks every change itself. At most 100 members, text only.
• Whoever starts a group is its admin. The admin chooses who can join: Open (anyone with the group's QR code), With approval (the admin lets people in) or Invitation only (the admin invites people from their contacts). Join from the Groups tab by scanning the group's QR code, or by holding your phone against a member's phone (NFC).
• If a member's phone was off while you sent something, another member's phone passes it on later, and nobody can change it along the way. Every message shows how many members received it; there are no read receipts in groups. You can mute a group, and hide the messages of members (except the admin's).
• Groups clean up after themselves: a member who hasn't been in contact for 30 days is removed, and a group is deleted for everyone when its admin hasn't opened DarkWire for 30 days (the admin can change or switch this off), or on an end date the admin can set. DarkWire warns you a day before. The Info page has the details, and the limits.
• Group members who aren't your contacts don't show up in your Contacts and can't call you. They do see your profile picture, so they can tell two people with the same name apart; you can switch that off in Settings.
• New: automatic backups. They are off by default; DarkWire never makes a backup unless you ask it to. Switch them on in Settings, under Backup & transfer: choose a PIN or password and a folder, and DarkWire makes a backup every day (or every number of days you choose) and keeps the last 7 (1 to 30, your choice). It never touches backups you made yourself. DarkWire keeps only a key made from your PIN, locked to that phone, never the PIN itself.
• Groups are not part of a backup. After a restore or a Transfer, the first group message that reaches your new phone brings you back into that group, admin role included, but without the older messages. Automatic backups need to be set up again on the new phone.
• The About screen has a new Groups topic and the automatic backups paragraph, the same text as the Info page on this website.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.17.150 on your contacts' phones for chats and calls. For groups, everybody in the group needs this version.

Back up your profile to a file, or move it to a new phone with one NFC tap. DarkWire can now tell you about new versions and install them for you. DarkWire now needs Android 9 or newer.

• DarkWire now needs Android 9.0 or newer. Android 9 is the oldest version we can actually test DarkWire on, and we don't want to ship something we can't test.
• New: backup file. In Settings, under Backup & transfer, you can save your profile, settings, contacts (with their pictures) and messages to one file, encrypted with a PIN (at least 6 digits) or a password you choose. You decide where the file goes; DarkWire never uploads it. Restore it there too, on this phone or another one. Files you sent or received are not included; the chat shows they weren't transferred.
• New: Transfer. Moving to a new phone? Open Settings, Backup & transfer, Transfer on both phones and hold them together (NFC). Your profile goes straight to the new phone over DarkWire's own encrypted connection, without a file and without any server, and the old phone is cleared once the new one confirms. Only on phones with NFC.
• One profile, one phone. Your profile can only be active on one phone at a time. After a restore or a Transfer, your contacts' apps only accept the newest phone, and a phone that still has the old copy stops sending and receiving. That phone tells you your profile moved; you can still read your old messages there, save your files to a folder, and then clear it. It never clears itself. Only your own profile key can mark a phone as the newest, so nobody else can switch your phone off this way.
• New: DarkWire can tell you when a new version is out. Once every 30 days (you can change the number of days in Settings, or switch it off) it fetches one small file from darkwire.nl. Nothing about you is sent along. A new version shows in a bar at the top of DarkWire, never as an Android notification. Tap it for what's new, and DarkWire downloads the update (asking first on mobile data), checks that it is complete, unchanged and signed with our key, and hands it to Android to install. The same goes for DarkWire Pulse. From this version on, you no longer need to come back to this page to update.
• Settings is easier to find your way around: every part folds open and closed, like the About screen. Save buttons are now in the same place everywhere, and the "Not yet implemented" placeholders are gone.
• The About screen in the app now has exactly the same text as the Info page on this website, including a new topic on backups and moving to a new phone.
• Fixed: on a fresh install, DarkWire could start its background work twice.
• Works together with DarkWire 0.16.139 on your contacts' phones.

Pair by holding two phones together (NFC), new app-lock settings for calls, and your contacts see your new profile picture straight away. DarkWire now needs Android 8 or newer.

• DarkWire now needs Android 8.0 or newer. Voice and video calls already did, and on Android 6 and 7 DarkWire could crash when a message came in.
• New: NFC pairing. Both people tap "NFC Pairing" (next to "Scan their QR") and hold their phones back to back. Both phones add each other in one tap, no camera needed. NFC is only active while that screen is open, for 60 seconds at most, so nobody can read your code or add themselves by tapping your phone at any other moment. If NFC is switched off, DarkWire tells you and takes you to the NFC settings. Phones without NFC don't show the button.
• New app-lock settings for calls, under Config → App protection (visible while the app lock is on): "Require unlock to answer calls" (off by default) and "Show caller name and picture while locked" (on by default). With the caller hidden, an incoming call shows only "DarkWire" on the call screen and in its notifications until you unlock.
• Unlocking DarkWire to answer a call also unlocks the app, and a call that comes in while DarkWire is still unlocked can be answered straight away.
• When you change or remove your profile picture, your contacts now get the new one automatically. A contact who can't be reached at that moment keeps the old picture until they re-fetch it themselves.
• Deleting a contact now also deletes their profile picture from your phone.
• The Info screen now mentions NFC as a way to share your code.
• Nothing of DarkWire is ever copied off your phone any more: not by a cloud backup and, new, not by a phone-to-phone transfer (for example Samsung Smart Switch) either. On a new phone you start with a fresh profile, as before.
• Supports Android's themed icons (the one-colour app icons of Android 13 and newer).
• Under the hood: all libraries updated, and a big cleanup of old and unused code.

Voice and video calls, directly between your phones and end-to-end encrypted, with no server in between.

• New: voice and video calls with your contacts. Tap the phone or camera icon at the top of a chat, or choose "Voice call" or "Video call" in a contact's menu. Calls go directly from phone to phone, encrypted end to end, just like your messages.
• Incoming calls ring with your phone's own ringtone (following silent mode and do not disturb) and appear full screen, also on the lock screen. An incoming video call can be answered with video or with voice only.
• During a call: mute, speaker, camera on or off, switch between the front and back camera, and hang up. A voice call uses the earpiece and turns the screen off at your ear; a video call uses the speaker. Bluetooth headsets and car kits are supported.
• A regular phone call during a DarkWire call puts the DarkWire call on hold, and it continues when you hang up the phone call.
• Calls survive switching between WiFi and mobile data: from mobile data to WiFi without interruption, the other way round after a few seconds.
• Your calls show up in the chat: "Missed voice call", "Video call · 12:03", "Declined" and so on. You also get a notification for a missed call.
• Calls work on Android 8 and newer. Only confirmed contacts can call you: not blocked contacts, and not someone who only connected through your shared QR code.
• DarkWire asks for the microphone at your first call, and for the camera at your first video call.
• There are no group calls.

A completely new way of connecting two phones, built on WebRTC: faster, much faster for files, and connections that survive switching between WiFi and mobile data. This version can't talk to older ones.

• DarkWire now connects phones with WebRTC, the widely used standard for direct connections, instead of its own home-made method. Still no servers of ours in between: your notification app carries the connection request as before, and messages are still end-to-end encrypted with the Signal protocol inside the connection.
• This version can't talk to DarkWire 0.14.131 or older. Update DarkWire on both phones; until the other phone is updated, your messages to them wait in the retry queue.
• Connections now only exist while they're in use. One opens when you send something, never just because you open or scroll through a chat, so reading a conversation never wakes the other phone. It closes after 2 minutes without messages.
• Files are much faster: in our tests 10 MB took 2 seconds and 50 MB 11 seconds on WiFi (before, about 220 KB per second), and 5 MB took 3.5 seconds over mobile data.
• An open connection now survives switching between WiFi and mobile data. It repairs itself in 1 to 4 seconds, and a file that's being sent carries on instead of failing.
• Faster delivery to a phone where DarkWire was closed: in our tests the message arrived 1 to 3 seconds after sending, also with the phone in deep sleep.
• Fixed: when a connection came up, two parts of DarkWire could encrypt a message at the same moment, which made the other phone reject one of them and repair the connection for nothing. Profile pictures were also sent twice; now once.
• The APK is 18 MB larger, because it now includes the WebRTC library.

A much smaller, easier-to-scan QR code, profile pictures in the message list and fetched automatically for new contacts, and a fix for messages that could get stuck right after pairing.

• The pairing QR code is now about half the size (208 instead of about 386 bytes), so it has fewer, larger squares and scans more easily, especially on older phones. Your name is no longer part of the code: a new contact shows as "New contact" until the first connection, when their name comes in automatically. Codes from older DarkWire versions can no longer be scanned; update both phones.
• Profile pictures now also show in the message list. You can turn this off in Config under "Thread list".
• A new contact's profile picture is now fetched automatically right after pairing, on both phones. If the picture doesn't arrive, DarkWire asks for it again by itself.
• Fixed: right after pairing, a message could get stuck when one of the two connection-setup packets got lost on the network. One phone then thought the connection was ready while the other couldn't read anything. DarkWire now notices this within 2 seconds and repairs the connection; in our test the message arrived about 3 seconds after sending.
• Fixed: pasting an invalid pairing code closed the app. It now shows an error instead.

Security fix, a serious battery-drain fix, faster start and delivery, choosing your notification app from Config, and contacts that reliably learn your new notification address.

• DarkWire contained a command entry point we use during development to test the app from a computer. By mistake it was also present in the normal app, and any other app on your device could use it to make DarkWire add a contact, send a message or delete contacts. It is now only present in our own development builds. We have no indication it was ever misused, but please update.
• As soon as you had at least one contact, DarkWire could get stuck redrawing its own screen over and over, keeping a processor core fully busy for hours, screen off included. On our oldest test phone it had used over 10 hours of processor time in a single night. The cause was a loop in how the app watched its own settings and contact list: every redraw started watching them again, and the contact list always looked "changed", which caused the next redraw. Both halves are fixed. On all three of our test phones DarkWire now sits at 0% when idle.
• DarkWire opens its encrypted message database much faster. Every time it opened a connection to it, it spent about half a second (newer phones) to nearly a second (older phones) on a key-strengthening step that added no security, because the key is already a long random one made on your phone. On our oldest test phone, a DarkWire that was closed now handles an incoming message in about 1 second instead of 4, and a message to it arrived 2 seconds after sending instead of about 8. The app also starts faster. Your key stays exactly where it was, protected the same way. The first start after this update re-encrypts the database once, in place (0.7 to 1.9 seconds on our phones); all messages stay.
• Messages that couldn't be delivered right away now go out the moment the other phone is reachable again, instead of waiting for the next retry, which could be up to 5 minutes away. In our test the other phone was offline for 8 minutes; the message arrived a fraction of a second after it came back online.
• Fewer wake-up signals: DarkWire used to send one to every contact each time it started, even when it was only woken up for a single incoming message. It now only tells your contacts when your notification address actually changes, and after a network switch only reconnects the chat you have open (or a file being sent). Everyone else reconnects the moment you send them something.
• New: choose your notification app in Config. When more than one is installed, "Change" lets you pick which one DarkWire uses (DarkWire Pulse is recommended). DarkWire properly signs out of the old one, and if the new one doesn't respond within 20 seconds (for example because it was never opened), DarkWire goes back to the old one and tells you why. Installing DarkWire Pulse from inside DarkWire while you already use another notification app now asks whether to switch.
• Your contacts now reliably learn your new notification address after it changes. Before, DarkWire told each contact once; a contact whose phone was off at that moment kept your old address, and their messages could no longer wake your DarkWire. It now keeps retrying (whenever you use DarkWire, at most every 15 minutes) until each contact confirms, for up to 7 days. Contacts that haven't confirmed yet show "Not updated yet" in Contacts, and after a switch a notice at the top shows how many are still to confirm.
• All of DarkWire's notices now appear at the top of the screen, including the short confirmations (like "Display name saved") that used to pop up at the bottom.
• Fixed: re-scanning the QR code of a favourite contact removed them from your favourites.
• Fixed a rare case where two updates to the same contact arriving at the same moment could make one of them get lost.

Much faster delivery to contacts whose DarkWire was closed, more reliable reconnecting, less battery and data use, and large files that actually arrive.

• Messages to a contact whose DarkWire was closed by Android (for example to free up memory, or after their phone restarted) now arrive within a few seconds. Before, DarkWire first kept trying the old connection for 30 seconds before waking the other phone up — in one test a message took 36 seconds. In our tests it now takes between 1 and 8 seconds, depending on the phone and network.
• Fixed a bug where, after one side switched networks (for example from mobile data to WiFi and back), messages could stop arriving on the other side until DarkWire was restarted there.
• Fixed reconnecting to a contact after a longer pause while both apps were still running — in some cases the connection could fail to come back on its own.
• Less battery and data use: DarkWire now only keeps a connection warm while you actually have that chat open on screen (or while a file is being sent). Before, it kept every connection it had ever made alive, every few seconds, for as long as the app ran. When you come back to a chat later, the first message takes a second or two to reconnect; after that it's instant again.
• Fixed large files: sending a big file (tens of MB) could freeze DarkWire and then close it. Files up to the size limit now send reliably — a 60 MB test file arrived byte-for-byte intact in under 5 minutes, even after leaving the chat while it was sending. A transfer now only gives up if it stops making progress, instead of after a fixed minute.

Reshare a profile with a friend on your contact's behalf, plus several reliability fixes.

• New: reshare a profile with friends. If you have someone's contact, you can now share their profile onward to introduce them to someone else — DarkWire fetches their current name, identity key, and connection details live before building the share, so it's never based on stale/cached info. Each person can turn this off for their own profile from Config ("Do not reshare my profile"), on by default.
• Fixed a bug where deleting a contact and re-pairing with them later (on the same devices/network) could silently inherit a stale connection state from the old pairing, leaving the new one permanently unable to connect.
• Fixed the "profile was shared" notification firing even when the reshare attempt was actually blocked.
• Fixed a notification-channel leak and an in-flight background task leak, both triggered by deleting a contact.
• Fixed the app icon's unread-count badge sometimes getting stuck showing "1" after it should have cleared.
• Updated the in-app "How it works" page's notification-app section, which still only mentioned ntfy and Sunup, to also cover DarkWire Pulse (and added the same older-Android ntfy note already on this website).

A one-tap way to install DarkWire Pulse, our own notification option, right from inside the app.

• On a fresh install, DarkWire now offers to install DarkWire Pulse for you with a single tap — no need to find and install a notification app yourself first. Pulse is downloaded, installed, and set up automatically, and DarkWire picks it up right away with no restart needed.
• This screen is also reachable any time afterward from a new button at the bottom of Config, in case you want to switch to Pulse later or install it again.

Fixes a rare bug where a message could arrive but silently never show up.

• Fixed a bug, found during testing of the new DarkWire Pulse push option, where — in rare cases, mainly on Samsung devices — a message could be correctly received in the background but then silently vanish before it was shown, with the notification for it still appearing as if everything worked. DarkWire now detects and recovers from this automatically.

Major reliability improvements for messages arriving while your screen is off, plus automatic recovery from more failure scenarios.

• Fixed messages sometimes failing to send or arrive while your phone was idle with the screen off for a while — Android's battery-saving "Doze" mode was silently blocking the connection. DarkWire now asks for a one-time exemption from battery optimization (visible in Config, and as a banner if not yet granted) so background delivery stays reliable, the same way other messaging apps handle this.
• Fixed a bug where, if either side's DarkWire was closed and restarted (by Android in the background, a crash, or a reboot), messages to that contact could silently stop working forever. DarkWire now detects this automatically and repairs the connection within a couple of seconds — no manual re-pairing needed.
• Messages now retry much sooner right after connecting to your push notification app for the first time, instead of waiting a full 5 minutes for the next attempt.
• More reliable reconnecting after a contact has been idle for a while — a prior fix for a related issue could, in some cases, itself prevent a legitimate reconnect from going through.
• Fixed a leftover "ntfy blocked" notice sometimes staying visible after switching away from ntfy to another push app.

Reliability fixes for connecting and reconnecting, plus clearer feedback when your push app needs attention.

• Fixed a crash that could happen during a brief network hiccup (e.g. switching cell towers on mobile data) while DarkWire was trying to reconnect to a contact.
• Fixed a bug where reconnecting to a contact — especially right after a fresh pairing — could sometimes never actually complete, even though everything looked like it should be working.
• Switching which push app you use (e.g. from ntfy to Sunup, or back) is now detected and picked up automatically, instead of silently getting stuck.
• A new notice appears if your push app is installed but has not started yet, telling you to open it once — this can happen right after installing a fresh push app.
• ntfy users: DarkWire now detects when you have hit ntfy's daily message limit and shows a clear notice instead of messages silently failing to send.
• Delete an entire conversation for both sides at once from the Messages tab (multi-select, then the delete button) — the other person's copy is removed too, not just yours.

App login protection — lock DarkWire with a PIN, password, or your fingerprint/face.

• Optional app lock: protect DarkWire with a PIN or password, with your device's fingerprint or face unlock available as a faster way in on top of it.
• Biometrics are always a shortcut, never a replacement — you always have a PIN/password to fall back on, so a forgotten fingerprint or unavailable sensor never locks you out.
• Choose how long the app can sit in the background before it locks again, from instantly to several minutes.
• Notification previews are hidden or shown following your existing preview setting, so app lock does not create a second thing to configure.
• Set up or change your app lock at any time from Config.

File sending, profile pictures, and messages that now arrive even if the app was fully closed.

• Messages are now delivered even if DarkWire was fully closed (not just running in the background) — no need to keep the app open to receive.
• Send and receive files in a chat — photos, videos, documents, anything — end-to-end encrypted the same as every message. Received files save to your device's normal storage, so you can find them outside the app too.
• A notification is shown when a file arrived, same as for a text message.
• A configurable maximum file size, 100MB by default, adjustable in Config.
• Interrupted file transfers (e.g. the app was closed mid-send) and files that fail their integrity check on arrival are now automatically caught and flagged for a one-tap retry, instead of silently disappearing.
• Profile pictures — set a square photo for yourself, crop it to fit, and it's automatically shared with new contacts you pair with. Tap any contact's or your own picture to view it full-screen. Re-fetch a contact's current picture at any time, one at a time or all at once from Config.
• A full in-app "How it works" page — encryption, privacy, the peer-to-peer design, and why there are no voice/video calls — reachable from Config.
• General spacing and button-alignment polish on the Config screen.

Contact management improvements and a reliability fix for reconnecting after a device change.

• Contacts can now be re-fetched to pick up a name change from the other person, either one at a time or all at once from Config.
• Blocking a contact now asks for confirmation first, and blocked contacts can be viewed and unblocked again from Config.
• Favorite contacts — pin the people you talk to most to the top of your Contacts list.
• Fixed a bug where switching notification apps, reinstalling, or clearing app data could silently and permanently break reconnecting with existing contacts until they were paired again from scratch.
• More reliable notification-app selection when more than one is installed.

First public beta.

• Direct device-to-device messaging — no message server, ever. Devices connect straight to each other over the internet (STUN + UDP hole punching), and UnifiedPush (e.g. ntfy) wakes the app to reconnect when a message comes in.
• End-to-end encryption using the Signal protocol (Double Ratchet) with post-quantum Kyber-1024 key material, the same approach used by Signal itself.
• No accounts, no phone number, no email, ever. A profile is just a display name plus a permanent QR code / pairing code — that is the only way anyone finds you.
• Pairing by QR code or code string, contacts list, 1:1 text messaging with delivery receipts, cancel-in-flight sending, and a background retry queue for messages that do not land right away.
• Per-contact notifications, an unread-thread indicator, and privacy toggles for hiding message previews and timestamps in the thread list.
• Dark and light themes, dark by default.
• Tested directly on a Samsung Galaxy S8+, Galaxy Z Fold5, and Galaxy Z Fold7.

Report a problem, straight from DarkWire Pulse.

• New: Report a problem, at the bottom of DarkWire Pulse's screen, opens the form on darkwire.nl with DarkWire Pulse and its version already filled in.
• DarkWire 0.17.150 and newer offers this update itself.

Open-source licenses: every library in DarkWire Pulse, with its full license text.

• At the bottom of DarkWire Pulse's screen, Open-source licenses lists every library it uses, with its full license text.
• DarkWire 0.17.150 and newer offers this update itself.

No more badge on the app icon.

• DarkWire Pulse no longer shows a dot or number on its app icon.

DarkWire Pulse now needs Android 9 or newer, like DarkWire itself. From now on DarkWire can update DarkWire Pulse for you.

• DarkWire Pulse now needs Android 9.0 or newer, the same as DarkWire.
• DarkWire 0.17.150 and newer tells you when a new version of DarkWire Pulse is out and installs it for you, so you no longer need to download it from this page.

The status-bar icon is now the DarkWire Pulse heartbeat. DarkWire Pulse now needs Android 8 or newer, like DarkWire itself.

• DarkWire Pulse's icon at the top of your screen is now its own heartbeat logo instead of a plain download arrow.
• DarkWire Pulse now needs Android 8.0 or newer, the same as DarkWire.
• Nothing of DarkWire Pulse is copied off your phone by a backup or a phone-to-phone transfer; its push registration belongs to this phone only.
• Supports Android's themed icons, and all libraries are updated.

Reconnects faster after your phone switches networks, so wake-up signals arrive sooner.

• When your phone switches networks (for example from WiFi to mobile data), DarkWire Pulse now reconnects to the push service in about 1 second instead of about 2.5 seconds. A wake-up signal sent to you in that short window can be held up at the push service for minutes, so the faster reconnect makes that much less likely. In our tests: 30 out of 30 network switches reconnected on the first try.

Ready the moment you unlock after a restart, no more reconnecting every 90 seconds, and it can now show its notifications.

• After your phone restarts, DarkWire Pulse is ready the moment you unlock it: in our tests it was connected within 1 second of unlocking. Before, it could take up to 44 seconds after unlocking, because it had to wait its turn behind every other app starting up. Until that first unlock it shows "Pulse — waiting for first unlock" (depending on your lock screen settings, possibly only as an icon). Messages sent to you in the meantime are held and arrive once you've unlocked, just like with other messaging apps.
• Fixed: DarkWire Pulse rebuilt its connection to the push service every 90 seconds, around the clock (about 940 times a day), costing battery and data and delaying a wake-up signal now and then. It now keeps one connection open and checks it with a tiny ping once a minute.
• DarkWire Pulse now asks for permission to show notifications. Before, it never asked, so on newer Android versions its notifications were never shown. Open DarkWire Pulse once after installing or updating it to allow this.

Reliability fix — a connection that had gone quiet could previously stop receiving messages until reopened.

• Fixed a rare case where DarkWire Pulse's connection to the push service could quietly go stale (e.g. after a while with no activity) and stop delivering wake-up signals, while still showing as connected. It now notices this automatically and reconnects on its own — no need to reopen the app.

First release.

• DarkWire's own UnifiedPush distributor — a third option alongside ntfy and Sunup for waking DarkWire up to reconnect when a message arrives.
• Uses Mozilla's free Autopush push service to deliver wake-up signals. DarkWire Pulse cannot read your messages — like every distributor, it only ever sees an encrypted wake-up ping, never any message content.
• A minimal status screen showing how many apps are currently registered through it, plus a battery-optimization exemption button for reliable delivery while your screen is off.