🎉BREAKING NEWS: Another app to save us from email tyranny! 🎉 Delta Chat bravely reinvents the wheel with "chatmail" (aka email) but with emojis! 🚀 It's like rediscovering the internet in 1999, but now you can send encrypted 🦄 stickers. 🌟
https://delta.chat/en/ #emailrevolution #chatmail #DeltaChat #emojiinnovation #encryptedcommunication #internetnostalgia #HackerNews #ngated

And some background on the current default:

The default of adding a new line came to be, because we were focusing on email at the time and there you can not delete an accidentally sent email.

Now we focus more on #chatmail and on there everyone uses #deltachat and you can delete and edit messages that were already sent.

Most other messengers use "Enter to send".

We are basically doing what #signal and in particular moxie refused to do or declares impossible: federation.

Both #email and #activitypub ecosystems are all about federation.

However, #deltachat is vertically centralized in that all UIs use the same #rust core which implements all networking, encryption, chat/group/message logic in a single centralized place. The now 40+ #chatmail mail relay network is driven from centralized code.

At each level replication and federation is built in.

@doboprobodyne @samuel @doktorzjivago @nichobi chatmail core usually takes between 14mb and 60mb of RAM (depending on account count), so the 16 MiB of the #Precursor may be a bit small.
So would require some tinkering to either make #chatmail core take less memory or some swapfile magic. (or a custom fork/implementation that removes features that are not supported like videos, webxdc and so on.)

I guess to make it speedy you would want to load an encryption module onto the FPGA next to the cpu.

Everyone returns to email in the end. We are there already. #whatsapp wants you to add your email to secure your account ... despite all the nay sayers and numerous well funded attempts and claims to kill #email not even WA can do it. #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc are about deep collab between people, projects and operators to evolve email from within. It is not just about SMTP and IMAP and MIME and OpenPGP which are all exchangeable and can be improved ... Which we set out to do. Cheers.

@MuhammadFreeSoftware If you want to send and receive #e2ee-only email, try #Chatmail. Works natively with #DeltaChat, but also with #Thunderbird.

@artfulrobot goodbye fellow 0.001% the other 99.999% of users have #Gmail, and other classic, ehem, "standard" providers that have crazy sending rate limits unusable for chatting and make it EXTREMELY hard to configure with 3rd party clients, since #chatmail and the new onboarding screen was introduced, A LOT more people was able to actually use #DeltaChat

I am also part of the 0.001% and I think it is ok if it is a bit harder for us but easier for the non-technical masses

Looking forward to a time where most many people (we) ditch instan messengers and move to chatmail servers instead.

Because this looks cool:

https://delta.chat/en/help#what-is-delta-chat

#chatting #texting #messaging #foss #email #chatmail

who knows how to migrate to another relay so that all chats remain? #deltachat #chatmail

What I really like about #DeltaChat / #Chatmail :
- no admins in groups. Groups without trusted people make no sense. Anyone can delete anything. It's more like a messenger for friends and family. It's a “feature” that I really like

What I don't like:
- not possible to pin messages (I read it's coming)
- webxdc is nice, but without pinned messages it's annoying to search the history for them
- moving profiles (I read it's coming)

2/4

#digitalprivacy #privacy #messenger #family #friends

What I really like about #DeltaChat / #Chatmail :
- no read receipts (optional)
- delete history/automatically delete (optional)
- save messages only on the device
- super easy setup (really! super easy!)
- no need to save credentials (but it's better to save them if you want to reinstall things often)
- easy setup for the second device. Just click on "Add second device"
- chatmail is super easy to maintain. No group admins make it even easier!
- desktop and Android app

1/4

#simple #easy

Chatmail просит прописать CAA-запись в DNS, в которой в тег issue прописано "letencrypt.org;бла-бла-бла-многабукав". А хуета где я взял хостинг не принимает ничего, кроме letsencrypt.org. Что я делаю не так?

#Chatmail

For some reason I cannot run a chatmail relay for @delta@chaos.social.
I follow the guideline from its GitHub-repo, but here's my output on the final step:

debian@29756:~/relay$ scripts/cmdeploy run
[ssh] login to deltachat.kz
root@deltachat.kz's password:
Collecting initial DNS settings..............
[$ pyinfra --ssh-user root deltachat.kz /home/debian/relay/cmdeploy/src/cmdeploy/deploy.py -y]
--> Loading config...
--> Loading inventory...
--> Connecting to hosts...
[deltachat.kz] SSH error (No authentication methods available)
--> Disconnecting from hosts...
--> pyinfra error: No hosts remaining!
Deploy failed
debian@29756:~/relay$

PS C:\Users\Admin> ssh root@deltachat.kz
root@deltachat.kz's password:
Linux 29756 6.1.0-26-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.112-1 (2024-09-30) x86_64
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Tue Jun 10 03:25:56 2025 from 37.208.41.18
root@29756:~#

The more I have to do with #email, the less I like it. be it your average postfix, exim, dovecot, roundcube, mailman.. whatever - unless you don't need/want to touch anything, like with #chatmail

@ex_06 Using delta with a variety of non-chatmail setups is just fine. It's only that #chatmail enforces end-to-end encryption and a cryptographic security baseline in server-to-server communications.

Given a dedicated small team of experienced devs, it might even be possible to re-use Delta's UIs and amend the core library to have an #XMPP backend and subsequently XMPP chat profiles.

But #Matrix? Are you seriously suggesting this?

Since June 1st there is a big sudden surge of new Delta Chat users and so far things are going pretty smooth. We are happy that our #chatmail infrastructure is holding up and that there is growing recognition that #deltachat is a ready-to-use and resilient chat solution. Some stats from the last days, a brief discussion of centralization risks and what we plan to do about it, also introducing a brand-new chatmail OpenCollective with a european fiscal host.

https://delta.chat/en/2025-06-04-surge-donations

@methuselah indeed, centralization in practise of theoretically decentralized messengers is a known issue. With a bit of time and funding we aim to tackle necessary mechanisms and cryptography for distributing load. FWIW, there are around 30 #chatmail servers which are functionally equivalent with each other. There is no penalty or lack of functionality if using any other than the default onboarding server.

@debacle yes -- probably the difference really is that #chatmail core did not start out as a protocol implementation but was designed and evolving with the actual UI first on Android, later iOS and Desktop apps, bots etc. So it wasn't the protocol at the center but the UI was driving what we need from the protocol layers.

@debacle that's about right! As to servers/relays: there are a lot of well working alternative stacks -- #chatmail core even runs with some #Plan9 mail server stack apart from the many classic email server implementations. Replacing Rust Core is possible but considerable work. Beating its maturity and cross-platform portability would require a serious effort. Not impossible, though. FWIW most other messenger projects (#Signal, #matrix, etc.) are trying to move towards Rust.