Quiet

Quiet is a team chat app built for people who want the convenience of Slack or Discord without handing their data to a company's servers. It syncs messages directly between your devices over Tor, so there's no central server to breach, subpoena, or shut down. It's currently in beta, so it's not yet suited for high-stakes security work, but it's already functional across Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

The core idea is simple. No server means no server breach. Your community's messages live only on your community's devices. That's a meaningful difference from tools like Signal, which still route traffic through central infrastructure and can expose metadata like who you talk to, when, and from where.

What sets it apart from other private messengers:

• No phone number or email required to create or join a community, unlike Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, or Discord
• Tor built in to hide IP addresses and location, not just encrypt message content
• Metadata protection so even the pattern of who talks to whom stays private
• Unlimited file transfers with no size cap
• Channels for organizing conversations, closer to Slack's model than Signal's
• Private channels readable only by selected members, not the whole community
• Disappearing messages with timed deletion rules
• Fully open source with no vendor lock-in

The channel-based structure makes it a practical fit for teams, activist groups, journalism organizations, or any community that needs ongoing, organized conversation rather than just one-on-one chats. You can run multiple communities simultaneously, share invite links, use @mentions, and react with emojis.

Compared to self-hosted options like Rocket.Chat or Twake Chat, Quiet requires no server administration at all. The peer-to-peer network handles connectivity automatically. That's a real advantage for small teams without technical infrastructure.