Messaging with no account

No phone number. No email. No password. You open it, and it works.

Free. Nothing to download from a store.

Nobody knows who you are

There is no sign-up form, because there is no account. Nothing ever asks for your name, your number or your email — so there is no list with you on it.

Only you two can read it

Messages are locked on your device before they leave it and unlocked on theirs. We could not read them if we wanted to — we do not have the key.

It does not pile up

A message waits on our server only until your friend's phone picks it up, then it is deleted. There is no archive of your chats anywhere but your own device.

How it works

Three steps, and none of them are a form

1

You get a key, not a login

The first time you open Ombra, your phone makes a key. That key is your identity. It is created on your device and it never leaves it.
2

You add a friend by scanning

Hold your phones together and scan the code on screen. There is no search box and no directory — which is the point. A directory would be a list of everyone who uses Ombra, and that is the list nobody should be keeping.
3

You talk, and it stays yours

Every message is locked with a key that changes each time. You can set them to delete themselves after a minute, an hour or a week.

Back omb-yx62-vjb2-2fs2 Config

09:14

‹ them

landed, all good

09:16

you › ✓✓

call me when you can

09:22

‹ them

two minutes

What we can see

Almost nothing, and that is on purpose

What never reaches us

What your messages say
Who you are talking to
Your name, number or email
Your contact list
Your address book or photos

What we hold, briefly

Scrambled messages waiting to be collected, for up to fourteen days. We cannot unscramble them and we cannot tell whose they are.

We keep no accounts, no chat history and no record of who connected. If someone demanded our records tomorrow, that is all there would be to hand over.

Important

One device at a time

Your key lives on the device that made it, so there is nothing in the cloud to sync. Install Ombra on a second phone and you get a separate identity — a different address, and none of your chats.

Set it up on the phone you actually use. If that changes later, move it across with a backup rather than running both.

1 — Save a backup

Config → Backup gives you one file, locked with a passphrase you choose. Keep it somewhere safe: a password manager, or a drive that is not the phone.

2 — Restore on the new device

Open Ombra there, choose Restore, give it the file and the passphrase. Your address and every conversation come back exactly as they were.

Lose both and it is gone

There is no password reset and no support desk that can let you back in, because nobody but you holds the key. That is the trade — take the backup seriously and it is a fair one.

Nothing to sign up for

Open it, and you have an address. That is the whole setup.