A messenger made of closed circles

EMAPKA is built out of one thing only — the group. A group is a closed circle of two to ten people. It is encrypted end to end, it knows nothing about your other groups, and when it is deleted, nothing of it is left behind.

Download#

Two ways to start#

There are exactly two reasons to install EMAPKA. Both are legitimate. Decide which one is yours before you begin.

• With other people

  You want a private circle: family, a work team, a group of friends. You create a group of two to ten people and invite them yourself, by showing them a code. Each of them has to install EMAPKA too. Without a second person the group stays empty.

• On your own

  You want a private notebook that nobody else can read: notes, documents, pictures kept encrypted on your own computer. That works with one person. You create a group for yourself and write into your own slot — the application calls it Notes.

Whichever you choose, the next page explains it step by step: After you install.

How you invite someone#

There is no phone number, no email address and no search. You invite a person the way you would hand them a key.

1. You create the group

   You choose its size — from two to ten people — and how long it should live: one day, two, three, seven, thirty days, or without a limit.

2. The application shows an invitation code

   A short code and a QR square. It belongs to this one group and to no other.

3. You pass the code to the person yourself

   In person, over the phone, by any means you trust. EMAPKA does not send it for you.

4. They install EMAPKA and enter the code

   They scan the QR square or type the code in, choose a name for themselves inside this group, and join.

What is inside#

Groups of two to ten

The creator sets the size, the name and the lifetime, and can change them later. A group can also be created without a name.

Channel +1

A conversation for exactly two people, created from inside a group. It then lives on its own: it survives the deletion of the group it came from, and only the two of them can close it.

Notes

A conversation with yourself, inside your own group. Text and files, encrypted on your own machine.

Files

Up to ten files attached to one message. Photographs, documents, anything.

Priority messages

A message that has to be seen. The sender is told when it was received and when it was read.

Six languages

Belarusian, English, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Russian. Changed at any moment in the menu.

One message holds up to 24,000 bytes — about 12,000 characters. If you have no network, the message waits in a queue and goes out when the connection comes back.

How your messages are protected#

• End-to-end encryption using the MLS standard (RFC 9420). Keys are made and kept on the participants' devices. The server never has them.
• The server does not know what it carries. It receives an already sealed parcel, holds it until the addressee picks it up, and deletes it. It does not know who is in a group or how many.
• Your device stores everything encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Keys are wiped from memory the moment they are no longer needed.
• No account, no phone number, no email. There is nothing to register and nothing for us to lose.
• Removing a participant re-keys the group. From that moment on, that person cannot read anything new, even if they kept old keys.
• Groups do not know about each other. Two groups on the same computer share no keys, no participants and no history.

Read the privacy section

What EMAPKA does not do yet#

This is a beta. It is more honest to say this here than to let you find out later.

• There is no way back if you lose access. Recovery is still being built. If you delete your key, or forget an entry scenario you set up yourself, the data on that computer stays closed forever.
• There is no phone version yet. Windows, macOS and Linux only.
• Without a network there is no delivery. Messages wait in a queue. Communication without the internet is being worked on.
• There is no public directory of people. By design. You can only reach someone you have invited or been invited by.
• On some Linux desktops the application cannot block screen capture. It says so on screen when that happens.

How to install