About
Ephemeral is a messaging app built around one idea: conversations that leave no trace. Messages are encrypted on your device and disappear 60 seconds after being read. When both people are online, they pass through our server without ever being written to disk.
The safest way to use Ephemeral
Think of it like a walkie-talkie: both you and the other person have the app open at the same time. When that happens, your message goes directly from your device to theirs — it is never written anywhere, not even temporarily. It exists only for the seconds it takes to travel between you.
For anything truly sensitive, this is the mode we recommend.
If the recipient is not currently online, Ephemeral can still deliver your message — it will be held until they open the app, for up to 48 hours.
To make this possible, your message needs to be stored somewhere temporarily. We do everything we can to keep it private and secure, but this introduces a step that the walkie-talkie mode does not have.
For information that is extremely private, we recommend waiting until you are both online.
To keep the app running, we store a minimum set of metadata: your email address, a list of who you have conversations with, and — when a message could not be delivered instantly — the encrypted message itself, held temporarily until the recipient comes online.
We never store message content in readable form. We do not store when you sent a message, what you said, or how often you write.
Deleting your account removes all of this immediately — your profile, your conversations, and any messages waiting to be delivered.
Standard infrastructure logs (connection timestamps, IP addresses) may be retained briefly by our hosting provider. These are outside our direct control and are not linked to your account or message content.
Most messaging apps offer a "disappearing messages" mode as an opt-in feature layered on top of a platform that was built to store everything. The messages still pass through their servers, may be included in cloud backups, and the feature can be turned off at any time.
Ephemeral is different: ephemerality is not a setting — it is the only mode the app has. Every message is encrypted before it leaves your device, and the server never sees plaintext. Messages are held for the minimum time technically necessary and no longer. There is no chat history, no archive, no backup. There is nothing to hand over, because there is nothing to keep.
Ephemeral also does not require a phone number or SIM card. An email address — even a temporary one — is all you need to create an account and start communicating.
Ephemeral is built in the EU and hosted in Europe. We do not sell data, show ads, or build profiles. The app has no interest in knowing what you talk about — and by design, it cannot.
Ephemeral is open source. Anyone can read the code, verify how it handles messages, and check that it does exactly what we say.
View the source on GitHub →