Direct messages

Overview

The app supports two chat modes:

Direct messages: Encrypted point-to-point messages to individual contacts
Channel messages: Broadcast messages to shared channels (see Channels)

This page covers direct messaging. For channel chat, see the Channels documentation.

How to Access

From the Contacts screen, tap any Chat-type contact to open the ChatScreen.

Chat Screen Layout

App Bar

Title: Contact name
Subtitle: Current routing path label (e.g., “2 hops”, “flood (auto)”, “direct (forced)”) and unread count. Tapping the subtitle shows the full path details.
Action button:
- Overflow menu (⋮ icon): Contains Routing, Info, Telemetry, Settings, and Clear Chat. Routing opens the routing sheet where you can switch between Auto, Direct, and Flood routing and manage recent paths (hop count, round-trip time, age, success count, color-coded by repeater). Info shows a dialog with contact type, path, GPS coordinates, and public key.

Message List

Scrollable list with newest messages at the bottom
Outgoing messages: Right-aligned, primary color background. Failed messages change to a red-toned error container background
Incoming messages: Left-aligned, grey background with a colored avatar (initial letter or first emoji of sender name; color is deterministic from a hash of the sender name)
Bubble width capped at 72% of screen width
Hyperlinks rendered as tappable green underlined text
Pinch-to-zoom: Two-finger zoom (0.8x–1.8x) and double-tap to reset
Jump to bottom: Floating button appears when scrolled away from the bottom
Lazy loading: Scrolling to top loads older messages from storage

Input Bar

GIF button (left): Opens GIF picker bottom sheet
Translation button (optional, between GIF and text field): Shown only when translation is enabled in App Settings. Tap to configure outgoing-message translation language and on/off toggle.
Text field (center): Auto-capitalization, enforces UTF-8 byte limit in real-time
Send button (right): Submits the message
On desktop: Enter/Numpad Enter also submits
When a GIF is selected, the text field shows an inline GIF preview with a dismiss button

Message Types

Type	Wire Format	Display
Plain text	Raw UTF-8 string	Inline text with link detection
GIF	`g:<giphy-id>`	Inline GIF image from Giphy CDN
Location pin	`m:<lat>,<lon>\|<label>\|...`	Location icon + label; tap to open map
Reaction	`r:<hash>:<emoji-index>`	Applied to target message as emoji pill

Message Status

Outgoing messages display a status indicator:

Status	Icon	Meaning
Pending	Grey double-check	Queued, waiting for device to transmit (visually identical to Sent)
Sent	Grey double-check	Device confirmed transmission (visually identical to Pending)
Delivered	Green double-check	Remote node acknowledged receipt
Failed	Red X	All retries exhausted

Message Tracing Mode

When enabled in App Settings, additional metadata appears inside each bubble:

Timestamp (HH:MM)
Retry count (e.g., “Retry 2 of 4”) — only shown for outgoing messages where at least one retry has occurred
Status icon (outgoing only)
Round-trip time in seconds (if delivered)

Message Length Limits

Direct messages: 156 bytes (UTF-8) — enforced in real-time by the input formatter
Channel messages: 160 minus sender name length minus 2 bytes for the "<name>: " prefix
Over-length paste shows a snackbar error

Send Queue

Only one message per contact can be in-flight at a time (to avoid overflowing the firmware’s 8-entry ACK table). If you send multiple messages rapidly, they are queued and sent sequentially — each waits for the previous one to be delivered, fail, or exhaust retries before transmitting.

Retry Mechanism

When a direct message is sent:

The app computes an expected ACK hash: SHA256([timestamp][attempt][text][selfPubKey])[0:4] — matching the firmware’s hash calculation. If SMAZ compression is enabled, the compressed text (not the original) is hashed
On device acknowledgment (RESP_CODE_SENT), the message transitions to “sent” and a timeout timer starts
Timeout duration: Preferably from the ML timeout prediction service; otherwise from the device’s own est_timeout in RESP_CODE_SENT (clamped to the physics range); otherwise calculated from LoRa airtime physics: 500 + (airtime × 6 + 250) × (pathLength + 1) ms for direct paths, 500 + 16 × airtime ms for flood (airtime is estimated from the radio’s current spreading factor, bandwidth, and coding rate). The result is capped at 45 seconds.
On timeout, the message is retried with exponential backoff: 1000 × 2^retryCount ms (1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s…)
Max retries: Configurable (default 5, range 2–10)
After max retries, the message is marked “failed” — but a 30-second grace window remains during which a late ACK can still resolve the message to “delivered”
If Clear Path on Max Retry is enabled (App Settings), the contact’s stored routing path is automatically cleared when max retries are exhausted
Auto route rotation: When enabled (and no manual path override is set), the retry service uses a diversity window to avoid re-using recently tried paths, cycling through known routes on each attempt

Manual Retry

Long-press a failed message → “Retry” to re-send using the current routing settings.

Reactions

Add emoji reactions to incoming messages (not your own):

Long-press (or right-click on desktop) a message
Select “Add reaction” from the context menu
Choose from quick emojis (thumbs up, heart, laugh, party, clap, fire) or browse the full emoji picker
Reactions appear as pills below the message bubble with emoji and count
Pending reactions show at 50% opacity with a spinner
Failed reactions show a red retry icon (tap to retry)

Context Actions (Long-Press / Right-Click)

Action	Availability	Description
Add reaction	Incoming messages only	Opens emoji picker
View path	All platforms: long-press/right-click menu	Shows message routing path
Copy	All messages	Copies text to clipboard
Translate	Incoming messages only (when translation is enabled and not yet translated)	Translates the message on-demand using the on-device model
Mark as Unread	Incoming messages only	Marks this message and all subsequent incoming messages as unread
Delete	All messages	Removes locally (not from mesh)
Retry	Failed outgoing messages	Re-sends the message
Open chat with sender	Room server chats	Opens 1:1 chat with the message sender