this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
68 points (90.5% liked)

Selfhosted

59939 readers
313 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts here are to be centered around self-hosting. Please ensure it is clear in your post how it relates to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or git here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Briar is a messaging app designed to be used by groups of people to allow for secure and censorship resistant communications.

This technically isn't self hosted in the strictest sense but I think it is still relevant.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's brilliant use, I like it.

So how does it work? Do you just need to "have Bluetooth turned on" and it reaches the recipient, or do you need to connect to each other somehow? Can this work for a group chat with a family, or colleagues on a conference trip perhaps?

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You need to enable Bluetooth as a method of connection in the app settings (and can turn off wifi and data there).

The phones can be in airplane mode but with Bluetooth turned back on (as you would to use earbuds).

I don't recall pairing the phones, but there is a "connect via Bluetooth" option on each chat that might be doing that automatically.

You link accounts to each other by scanning qr codes.

It does have a group chat but I haven't used it, so I don't know if that works with Bluetooth alone.

I just tried testing this with an old phone of mine, but can't get it to work right now (maybe because it has Graphene os?), but I have actually used it on flights in the past.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

I tested some more and can't get it to work any more. I found a post saying it worked in 1.5.2 so maybe something broke in newer versions.