What Surf Messenger does.
Everything on this page is in the app today, with its limits listed alongside it.
Conversations
One to one, groups, or one voice to many.
Maya Chen
End to end encrypted
What a thread can do
The controls sit with the conversation, so both sides see the same rules.
Direct messages and groups
One to one, or up to 256 people. A group encrypts once per sender, so a busy thread stays quick on a phone.
Channels
One person posting to many, with a broadcast-only mode for announcements. Running a channel is part of a Sapphire subscription. Reading one is free.
Message requests
Someone you do not follow goes to a separate tray. Blocking sends nothing to the person blocked.
Slow mode
A minimum interval between posts, set per thread at ten seconds, thirty seconds, a minute or five. The composer holds the send until the timer is up.
In a thread
What each of these tells the other side.
- Replies and reactions
- Quote any message; six quick reactions
- Editing
- Marked as edited, with a server timestamp
- Typing indicator
- Sent live and never stored
- Read receipts
- Reciprocal. Turning them off is a Sapphire setting
- Muting a thread
- Eight hours, a week, a month, or indefinitely
- Chat themes
- Fifteen
Control over what stays
Set how long a message lasts before you send it.
Disappearing messages
Five minutes, an hour, a day or a week, set for the conversation. Or after-read, where the clock starts when they open it. Expiry erases the decrypted copy on the device too.
View once
A photo that opens once. No copy is kept on either device.
Archive
Move a thread out of the list without leaving it. It comes back when someone writes.
Starred messages
Keep an address or a flight number where you can find it, without scrolling back through the thread.
Finding things again
Search runs on your device, so your chats never leave it.
Search
Maya Chen
the flight lands at 6:40, terminal 2
Devon Park
here is the lease pdf
Lia Moreno
shared a link
Searched on this device.
Search, and what it reaches
Search across every chat
Words, links, files and voice notes in one place, filtered by kind, jumping straight to the message in its thread.
The index is on your device
The index is built where your messages can already be read. Your query never leaves the device, and opening a result asks the server for a message by id.
It tells you what it could not open
A message this device has no key for is counted and named in the results.
Shared media
Every photo, file and voice note from a conversation in one place, each under its own key.
Calls
Voice and video, and how the media gets there.
Voice and video, device to device
Calls connect directly between the people on them and the media is encrypted on the wire. When a network will not allow a direct connection the media is relayed, still encrypted, by a service with no key to it.
Call history
Who, when, how long, and whether it connected. Group calls carry up to eight people on voice and four on video.
Moving between devices
How your history reaches a new device.
Encrypted backup
On by default, encrypted before it leaves the device, and unlocked by a recovery key you write down. It keeps up as you go.
Link another device
Approve a new device from one you already use. Five at a time, and the least recently used one is dropped.
Your Surf account
The same account as the social app, and the same conversations. Several accounts can be signed in on one device, each with its own keys and its own history.
Runs in the browser
There is nothing to install. Add it to your home screen and it opens in its own window, works offline, and delivers a call as a notification.
The numbers
Every limit in one place.
- People in a group
- 256, all end to end encrypted
- People on a call
- 8 on voice, 4 on video
- Devices at once
- 5. The least recently used is dropped
- Files per message
- 10
- Photo
- 10 MB, re-encoded on your device before it is sent
- Video
- 500 MB
- Voice note
- 60 seconds, or longer on Sapphire
- Other files
- 100 MB
Running a channel and turning read receipts off are part of a Sapphire subscription. Everything else on this page is on a free account. A group above 256 people is not end to end encrypted, which is where the cap comes from. Where it stops covers the rest.