Keep your people close. Even off the grid.

Knit is a free, open-source messaging app for Android that doesn't need internet or cell service. Phones running Knit pass messages to each other over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so a message can hop through a crowd to reach someone beyond your phone's range. Direct and group chats are end-to-end encrypted. The Nearby room is the open one, for talking with everyone around you. There's nothing to sign up for. Pair an optional Meshtastic LoRa radio when you want direct messages to travel kilometres.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes. Any file up to 8 MB can go in a direct message or group chat and travels across the mesh like a message. For something bigger, open a direct message with someone nearby and pick Direct file send: once they accept, your two phones connect over Wi-Fi and the file, up to 8 GB, goes straight across. It is sealed end to end with a key made for that transfer and never crosses the mesh or the internet. Both phones need Wi-Fi switched on, and the file lands in their Downloads folder.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your chats come with you. In Settings, Backup and restore writes your identity, contacts, groups, messages and photos into one encrypted file you save wherever you like. A recovery key that Knit shows once and doesn't keep is the only way to open it. On the new phone, choose Restore from the welcome screen, pick the file and enter the key. Your contacts see the same person, and conversations pick up as their phones reconnect. Use a backup on one phone at a time and stop using Knit on the old one, since two phones sharing one identity keep resetting each other's chats.

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.

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.

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.

Not yet, but it's coming. Knit for iPhone is in development and speaks the same protocol as the Android app, so an iPhone will mesh over Bluetooth with the Android phones around it. There's no release date yet, and until it ships, Knit runs on Android 10 and newer.

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.