# Keep your people close. Even off the grid.

> Knit is an offline-first, serverless messenger. Your phone relays messages to nearby devices over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with end-to-end encrypted direct and group chats. No internet or servers required, no accounts. Pair a Meshtastic LoRa radio for kilometres of range, or switch on sealed relays to keep a chat flowing when you're apart.

Find friends across a crowd and keep the group in touch. Knit carries messages between nearby phones over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with no internet or servers required and no account to create.

No internet needed · No servers needed · No accounts · No Google Play services · End-to-end encrypted chats · Forward secrecy · On-device AI moderation · Works with Meshtastic · Open source · Android 10+

## Your message hops across the crowd

Each Knit phone can help carry a message to the next. Together, nearby phones build a route beyond the reach of any one device.

1. **Knit finds nearby phones** — Open Knit with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled, and it discovers other Knit phones nearby. You can start chatting without pairing phones or creating an account.
2. **Your message hops device to device** — Every phone that receives your message passes it onward, so it ripples outward across the crowd.
3. **It reaches people beyond your range** — Each hop extends the route toward your friend. The people between you help your message travel beyond your phone's own range.

## The conversations you want to carry with you

Photos, voice notes, group plans and quick hellos, with nearby phones helping your messages reach the next person.

- **Mesh relay messaging** — Reach friends across the crowd as nearby Knit phones carry your messages onward over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. If a path is temporarily missing, the mesh holds your message for the next opportunity. Switch on optional Internet relays to keep existing chats going after you head home.
- **Long range with a LoRa radio** — Take your conversations farther with an optional Meshtastic radio. Pair it over Bluetooth to carry direct messages and the public Nearby room across kilometre-scale hops. One board with each distant group shares that reach with nearby Knit phones. Group chats and attachments stay on the phone radios.
- **Nearby room + direct messages** — Drop into the public Nearby broadcast, or start a 1:1 thread only the two of you can read. Both come with unread badges, typing and delivery indicators, and relative timestamps, in a clean Signal-style UI.
- **Group chats** — Create named group conversations, see who's in them, rename them and come and go freely as the mesh shifts around you.
- **End-to-end encrypted chats** — Your direct and group chats are end-to-end encrypted, including when other phones carry them for you. Compare safety numbers or scan a QR code to verify a contact. Keys rotate per block of messages and spent keys are deleted to protect recorded traffic; peers on older builds use the previous static-key scheme without that protection.
- **Reactions, mentions & profiles** — Find the right emoji for the moment, reply inline and @-mention someone to bring them into the conversation. Give your profile a name, status and avatar. A friendly alias like ReallyEnlightenedZebra helps people tell you apart.
- **Photos, voice notes & files** — Share the view, record a voice note or send a useful file up to 8 MB. Direct messages and group chats keep those attachments sealed end to end. You can share photos in the public Nearby room, too. Attachments are fetched when opened, keeping the mesh ready for the next message. Something bigger goes to a nearby contact straight over Wi-Fi, phone to phone.
- **On-device AI moderation** — A bundled AI model runs entirely on your phone to filter abusive text and blur explicit images behind tap-to-reveal. Nothing is uploaded and nothing leaves your phone. Block a sender in a tap, or switch it off.

## Bring Knit along

- **Festivals & crowds** — Find your group when the network buckles under thousands of phones.
- **Marches & rallies** — Coordinate on the ground when you'd rather not lean on the cell network.
- **Disasters & dead zones** — Stay reachable when towers are down, or were never there to begin with.
- **Travel & off-grid** — Message the people around you on a trail, a boat or abroad. No SIM required.
- **Packed venues** — Cut through congested stadium and conference Wi-Fi with a network of your own.
- **Outages & blackouts** — Keep your block in touch when a storm or outage takes the power, and the internet, with it.

[Offline messaging guides](https://getknit.app/offline/index.md) for practical ways to stay in touch at events, on trips and around your neighbourhood.

## Your conversations, protected

Share with confidence in end-to-end encrypted direct and group chats. Verify a contact in person and choose the connections you want to use.

- Direct and group chats stay end-to-end encrypted, including when other phones or optional relays carry them.
- Keys rotate per block of messages and spent keys are deleted to protect recorded traffic. Peers on older builds use the previous static-key scheme without forward secrecy.
- Your chat history is encrypted on your phone under a hardware-backed key excluded from backups. Reading it requires unlocking the device.
- Text and image moderation runs on your phone, with no uploads for analysis.
- The Knit app is open source under the GPLv3. Anyone can inspect how it works or build it themselves.

The public Nearby room is an open broadcast, like talking with everyone around you. The Meshtastic room follows your radio's channel and sits outside Knit's encryption.

## Who builds Knit

**Jeff Mixon**, Founder of Knit. One engineer, from the chat screen down to the radio.

Jeff Mixon is a senior software engineer who builds distributed systems, full-stack products, and machine learning infrastructure. His work spans the stack, from TypeScript services and mobile applications down to Linux kernel drivers and software-defined radio.

That range matters for Knit. It communicates directly over the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios already in your phone, without requiring an account or central server. Direct and group chats are end-to-end encrypted, while moderation runs locally on the device.

Jeff designs, builds, and maintains Knit himself.

- [jeffmixon.com](https://www.jeffmixon.com/)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/zaventh)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaventh)

## Help Knit keep growing

Knit is free and ad-free, supported by people who use it. Your contribution helps fund the next improvements and keeps the app available to everyone.

- [Support development on Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/knit)
- [Support development on Liberapay, recurring](https://liberapay.com/zaventh/)
- [Sponsor development on GitHub](https://github.com/sponsors/getknit)

Knit is built by an independent developer, not a company or charity. Contributions are voluntary, not tax-deductible, and come with nothing owed in return.

## FAQ

### Is Knit really free?

Yes. Knit is free and has no ads. It's funded entirely by the people who use it, through Ko-fi, Liberapay and GitHub Sponsors, which is why those buttons are on this page. Knit is one independent developer's project, not a company or a charity, so chipping in is a plain thank-you: it isn't tax-deductible, it buys nothing, and nothing is owed in return. If Knit is useful to you, it's what keeps development going.

### Does it really work with no internet?

Yes. Knit connects nearby phones over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with no internet connection or cell service required. Opt-in Internet relays let existing direct and group chats continue when you are farther apart. You choose when to turn them on.

### How far does it reach?

Every Knit phone extends the route, so a message can travel well beyond your own Bluetooth or Wi-Fi range. Phone hops typically cover tens of metres. For bigger gaps, pair Meshtastic radios with the phones at each end: LoRa hops can span kilometres, depending on terrain and radio setup.

### Can it reach someone who isn't nearby?

Yes. Nearby phones can carry a message onward until it reaches the person you want. For longer radio hops, add Meshtastic boards at each end to extend direct messages and the public Nearby room. For conversations farther afield, switch on optional Internet relays: they hold sealed copies of existing direct and group chats until the other end connects. Relays need no accounts, cannot read the messages and expire copies within 48 hours. They can see that a conversation is active and the IP addresses connecting to it. The public Nearby room stays radio-only.

### Do I have to run my own relay?

No. Internet relays are opt-in and stay off until you add one, and Knit works without them. When you do want one, there are three ways: switch on the relay Knit already lists, add one that someone you trust runs, or run your own with Knit Spool, the open-source relay software. Whichever you choose, your phone seals each message before it leaves, so a relay holds copies it cannot read. There is also a fourth: Knit Hosted, a Spool that Knit's developer runs for you as a separate paid option, for people who would rather not run their own. You get a hostname and a token of your own, and it runs the same Knit Spool, so it sees what any other relay sees and nothing more.

[Knit Hosted](https://hosted.getknit.app/)

### Does Knit work with Meshtastic radios?

Yes. Pair a Meshtastic board over Bluetooth to extend direct messages and the public Nearby room across longer radio hops. One board with each distant group can serve the Knit phones around it, so everyone can share the extra reach. Knit handles channel setup and preserves the board's primary channel. Direct messages stay end-to-end encrypted; group chats and attachments use the phone mesh or an optional relay. Sender and recipient addressing, timing and size remain in the clear on the radio channel. You choose whether direct messages use LoRa, and the hardware is entirely optional.

### What is the Meshtastic room?

Your radio's primary Meshtastic channel, right inside Knit. Read and post without switching apps, and see which posts match a contact's radio. A valid radio signature earns a shield when Knit can verify it against that contact's profile. The room sits outside Knit's encryption: default channels use publicly known keys, while custom channel keys are shared by the radios that know them. Posts stay on the Meshtastic side; Knit does not forward them into its phone mesh or onto the internet. You can turn the room off and keep using the radio for Knit messages.

### Is it secure? Is it end-to-end encrypted?

Direct and group chats are end-to-end encrypted, including their text, mentions and attachments. Only participants can read them, and you can verify a contact by comparing safety numbers or scanning a QR code. Forward secrecy protects recorded traffic through key rotation per block of messages and deletion of spent keys. Peers on older builds fall back to the previous static-key scheme, which has no forward secrecy. The public Nearby room is open by design, an open broadcast everyone around you can read.

### If someone gets hold of my phone, can they read my chats?

Your chats are stored in an encrypted database, protected by a key in Android's hardware-backed keystore that stays out of cloud backups. Copying the files from a locked phone does not make them readable. Someone who can unlock the device and open Knit can read the chats, so your screen lock remains important.

### Is Knit open source?

Yes. The Knit app is published on GitHub under the GPLv3 licence. Explore how messaging, encryption and on-device moderation work, build the app yourself or contribute an improvement. The source is there for anyone to inspect.

### What permissions does it need?

Just the nearby-devices permission, so Knit can find the phones around you. Older Android versions may also ask for location, because the system ties Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning to it. Knit reads where you are only when you send it from a chat's menu, and Android asks for that permission the first time you do. It works best when allowed to run in the background so it can keep relaying for the people around you.

### Where can I get Knit?

Knit is live on the Google Play Store and on F-Droid, the app store for free and open-source software. Tap either button on this page to install it. F-Droid builds Knit from the public source, so you can check that what lands on your phone matches the code on GitHub. Either way it's the same free app, and support on Ko-fi is what keeps it growing.

### What do I need to run it?

An Android 10 phone or newer. That's it. No Google Play services, no SIM and no account. Knit meshes over both Wi-Fi Aware and Bluetooth LE, so it still works on phones that only have one of the two.

## Latest update

**Knit 2.6.0**, 16 September 2026 — Search every chat, send big files phone to phone, and see what your mesh carried. [Release notes](https://getknit.app/updates/index.md)

## Get the app

- [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.getknit.knit)
- [F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/app.getknit.knit/)
- [Source code on GitHub (GPLv3)](https://github.com/getknit/knit)

Canonical page: https://getknit.app/