This feature is unique to SimpleX Chat – it is independent from chat profiles.
When "Incognito” is turned on, your current profile name and image are NOT shared with your new contacts. It allows connections with other people without any shared data – when you make new connections or join groups via a link a new random profile name will be generated for each contact or group.
This page allows you to create a long term address that can be used by other people to connect with you. Unlike 1-time invitation links, these addresses can be used many times, that makes them good to share online, e.g. on other social media platforms.
When people connect to you via this address, you will receive a connection request that you can accept or reject. You can configure an automatic acceptance of connection request and an automatic welcome message that will be sent to the new contacts.
If you start receiving too many requests via this address it is always safe to remove it – all the connections you created via this address will remain active, as this address is not used to deliver the messages.
This section is labelled "Settings" in the app settings.
Notifications
-
This page allows to configure the notifications mode: instant, periodic or only when the app is running. There are some differences in how these options work on iOS and Android. Please read more in this post about how notifications work.
+
This page allows to configure the notifications mode: instant, periodic or only when the app is running. There are some differences in how these options work on iOS and Android. Please read more in this post about how notifications work.
You can also configure whether the message preview is shown when the message arrives.
Please note: For instant and periodic notifications to work on Android, you need to disable power optimization when prompted by the app, or later via the settings. Also, some variants of Android system require additional settings, for example MIU system on Xiaomi phones requires to enable "Auto start" for the app for the notification service to work. Please read Don't kill my app guide for any settings that may be required on your device.
Also, currently instant notifications have the highest battery consumption - we are working to reduce it to be less or the same as for periodic notifications.
This option makes the app connect via a SOCKS proxy that should be provided by some other app running on your device.
The most typical use for this is to run Orbot app that provides a SOCKS proxy to connect via Tor network, but it can be some other app and it can proxy connections via some other overlay network.
Please note VPN on iOS can send some traffic to the usual network, if, for example, VPN app crashes. You can configure enable always-on VPN mode on managed iOS devices, but this is not applicable to most individual devices.
Transport isolation (BETA)
This option is only available if you have enabled developer tools.
If your network is slow, and connections to the servers keep failing (you would see a spinner on your contacts), please increase TCP and protocol timeouts in this page.
full link: the full link is shown. The link will still not be opened in the browser.
via browser: the full link is shown, and it will be opened in the browser. In this case, if the link domain is different from simplex.chat, the link will be shown in red color, as it might be malicious.
Please note: iOS call interface allows accepting the calls without unlocking the device and the app. If this is undesirable, please disable it – the calls will show as notifications in this case.
When installed, the app generates a random passphrase for the chat database and stores it securely in KeyChain (iOS) or using KeyStore (Android, TPM module is used when available). You can set your own passphrase and also remove it from the device, in which case you will need to enter it every time you start the app, and notifications may be limited, in the Database passphrase & export settings.
After you have created the chat profile the app will ask you to choose notifications mode.
Please read their description, as on iOS it is trade-off between convenience and privacy, with instant notifications sharing more meta-data with the servers, and on Android it is a trade-off between notification delays and battery life.
When you just start using the app, you can tap "chat with the developers" to ask any questions or just to test the app - feel free to send any test messages.
This button will disappear once you make the first connection. To connect to the developers later:
delete for everyone - this will either mark the message as deleted for you and the recipient(s) (this is the default) or fully delete the message on your and recipients' devices (if you have enabled "Delete for everyone" in the conversation preferences)
delete for me - this will delete the message only locally.