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Anonymous rooms

An anonymous room needs no account and no phone number: you pick a display name and share the room's link. Anyone with the link can join, unless the room has a password.

Create or join a room​

  • Create room gives you a new room and its link to share.
  • Join room takes a link or a room ID. A room ID is 8–20 lowercase letters, numbers and dashes.
  • Pick a display name, 1–24 characters, not used by anyone else in that room. It's the only thing others in the room see, and you can change it later.

Rooms never show when you're online or last seen.

How long a room lasts​

Each message in an anonymous room is kept for a set number of days after it's sent, 10 by default, then deleted. If someone with an account keeps the room, its history stays until the room's kept-until date instead.

A chat can also turn on disappearing messages, so new messages go sooner.

Rooms with a password​

Set a password when you create a room, and everyone else needs it to join. A room with a password encrypts its messages on your device, using that password. Send the password to people separately from the link.

Read what the password does and doesn't protect in Passwords & encryption.

What anonymous means here​

No account and no phone number. It doesn't mean invisible.

  • Your device still connects to AChat's servers, as it would for any website.
  • AChat records the display name you pick in each room, the messages you send there and a device ID used in that room.
  • If you also have an account, AChat doesn't link your anonymous messages to it.
  • In an open room (no password), anyone with the link can read the messages.

Rooms from the old AChat​

Room links from before the rebuild still open, with their messages, passwords and kept rooms.

In a room with a password, enter the same password to read its earlier messages, with their names, replies, polls and files. A message that can't be read shows a line saying so.

The old AChat encrypted a password room's messages, but stored its files without encryption, each at a public link that can't be guessed. Those earlier files are kept as they were, so anyone who has one file's link can open that file.