Delta Chat

OH in some chaos circles "#deltachat is the new emacs of operating systems" ...
We are not sure about that 😂 but what we do know is we are soon bringing out releases that we have been working towards for 12 months in multiple already released steps. The funniest thing? Nothing changes on the surface which was precisely what we worked for so long ... more soon, after internal testing and some pending bug fixes land :) and no worries, there will also be interesting visible changes. Stay tuned :)

Our strong focus on end to end encryption and zero metadata does mean that one of the original project notions of "you can use delta chat as a lightweight cleartext email client and your contacts don't need to care" was deprioritized since some time now and remains available rather for specialists only. It used to be encrypted mail that was hard to do and only for experts. Delta kind of reversed this. Now it's hard to do cleartext. But you can self host your mailbox addresses. No changes there!

some insights from #deltachat forum gardening 🌸

- we’re getting about 7 new feature proposals per week, with over 1k ideas shared so far

- we aim to keep things simple and focused, so we often have to say "no!", but:

- we do listen: over the years, we’ve fulfilled about ONE THIRD of your wishes 🧞‍♂️

your pushes are appreciated ❤️

https://support.delta.chat/c/features/6

While platforms like #Matrix or #Signal manage user identities on a server, #DeltaChat and #Chatmail are not platforms in the classic sense. They operate without a central registry, meaning there is no central gatekeeper to grant or deny access. This setup for private messaging naturally complicates invasive age verification. Without a public registry or user discovery, there is no technical hook to verify users. #Chatmail also enforces E2EE by rejecting all unencrypted data. ... (1/3)

We engage with decentralization protocols a lot (many nerds love to) but make no mistake: in the end, the app needs to work and be easy to use. #deltachat is a cross-platform FOSS offering, with guaranteed security levels, close to user expectations ... major factors in driving adoption!

True, the email system is not necessarily better than #xmpp ... but please compare with http://chatmail.at which is fast, ephemeral and secure, with delta inherently being a peer-to-peer E2EE messenger :)

It took a while but it's shaping up nicely :) Post-Quantum Cryptography and Reliable Deletion, better known as Forward Secrecy, are going to become available in 2026 in #deltachat. For more details, including the recent #fosdem26 talk recording:

https://autocrypt2.org

Ever wondering where the QR codes in #deltachat come from? each of them is handmade, as everything in delta :) #fosdem

Now in the #FOSDEM live stream: Holger introducing #autocrypt2, a mechanism to protect against store-now-decrypt-later attacks, to be introduced in Delta!

https://live.fosdem.org/watch/k4201

More details about the talk:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/TV7GCC-autocrypt_2_post-quantum-cryptography_and_reliable_deletion_forward-secrecy/
#DeltaChat #forwardsecrey #reliabledeletion

#deltachat does

- no bindings to public handles/numbers

- no address-book upload

- not do public contact or group discovery

- not have critical persistent server state (!)

Social identification is private, between people though ephemeral #P2P #E2EE messages.

Servers see messages with random sender and recipient addresses, but those can not be mapped to a phone number or public handle. Servers see IP addresses. But you can use Tor, or a VPN, if you want to hide that.

It' not all bad :)

Relax 😎! GPG is not OpenPGP!

Yesterday, vulnerabilities were published https://gpg.fail but they don't affect #deltachat or other #chatmail clients because

A) We never used #gnupg for anything; we use the modern #rustlang #openpgp implementation @rpgp@mastodon.social, security audited multiple times.

B) #openpgp is fine, as modernized in #RFC9580, which already warns against several #gpgfail issues (gpg didn't implement that spec)

Please spread the word that #gpg is not #openpgp ... Thanks! #39c3

hypercentralizers are not having a good day today -- #github has joined #cloudflare to block or slow down millions of folks from doing stuff. Maybe a good time to checkout out this new ACLU article about the current Apple/Google app-store oligopoly https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/app-store-oligopoly TL;dr Google/Apple increasingly wield their world-wide #appcontrol in the political interests of various governments, and not in the interest of user security or privacy. The article lays out three areas of fighting back ...

We hereby challenge _all_ other messaging apps, FOSS or not, to provide a more convenient private onboarding experience than #deltachat

1. Install app
2. "Create new profile"
3. Enter nick name, tap "Agree and continue"
4. Tap "+" and "new contact" and provide/scan qr code/link

Voila! A secure private chat, familiar to those coming from Whatsapp or Telegram (without "AI", with #a11y).

Note: chat identities are private and can not be queried or discovered. Servers keep no track or metadata