Start a room, share its five-character code or link with one person, and your two browsers connect directly. A room has two seats, so nobody else gets in. When your networks can’t reach each other, my relay passes the traffic along, still encrypted. Drop out for a moment or switch networks and your page picks up where it left off.
How it’s protected
Everything is encrypted with a key only your two browsers know. The code is just a meeting point, never a key. I keep nothing: no transcript, no files.
Photos can carry where they were taken. Tick wipe metadata under the message box and your browser strips that, the camera and the date before sending; the same switch works in Clipvault.
Safety words
My server introduces your two browsers, so in theory I could swap the keys between you. To rule that out, press the shield button beside the room code and read the five safety words to each other by phone or in person. If they differ, the connection closes.
If the connection drops and comes back, your two pages prove to each other that they are still the same two, so you aren't asked again (when both pages are up to date). After a reload, or if someone new takes the seat, you are.
Video calls
Press call. Nothing starts until the other person accepts, and you each choose whether to join with mic, camera, both or neither. Picture and sound go straight between your browsers.
Tap your own small picture to swap it with theirs and see yourself big. Then pinch, or scroll while holding ctrl on a computer, to zoom in: your friend sees the zoomed picture, so you can show them something up close. Double tap to zoom back out.
Mute, turn your camera off or share your screen whenever you like. Start with one window and switch to another, or to your whole screen, without stopping. While you share, you can let your friend point at your screen: their taps show up as a ping for you, and they can never click or type on your computer. Pinch to zoom in on a screen someone shares with you.
When a call ends, the last picture breaks into glowing pixels and boils away to a single dot, then no carrier and the length of the call. It is only a show on your own screen, made from a snapshot that never leaves your tab.
Calls ring only while the tab is open. I don’t route alerts through Apple or Google.
Video call invites
Waiting for someone? Tick video call and the link you share is a call invite. Whoever opens it gets a few easy steps: pick mic and camera, try them, then ring you. A guise is there too, folded away until they open it. They can skip to plain chat at any step.
You see how far they’ve got, and once they’re ready whether they’re coming with camera and mic on. Their picture stays with them until you answer, and you still answer the ring yourself. The link marks itself as a call invite, which my server can see. Nothing more.
Guise
Want to be seen and heard a little less? Pick a guise, a face and a voice, before a call or during one. It all happens on your own device, so your friend only ever gets the disguised version.
Each face has a level. Turn it down and the blocks, dots or letters get finer, so your friend sees more of you; turn it up and they get coarser, hiding more. You can change it mid-call and the picture follows at once.
What it isn’t
Not a group chat, and not a place that remembers: refresh and the messages are gone.
CryptYak