this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Onionphone - E2EE PTT Voice and Chat (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Used_Gate@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Onionphone is a native Android application for anonymous, end-to-end encrypted push-to-talk voice and text communication over the Tor network. No servers, no accounts, no phone numbers — your .onion address is your identity.

Cross-platform compatible with Terminalphone — call between Android and Linux/Termux using the same protocol.

Optionally use your connection as a relay for ephermeral group channels.

Find the release page for version 1.0.2 which supports custom bridges for accessing censored networks.

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[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@Used_Gate I suggest getting this in f-droid if you want to see more usage.

Also, it looks like the actual development happens in private and then is thrown over the fence; https://gitlab.com/here/_forawhile/onionphone/-/commit/2c4afc462a42852f0d54dda0b333db9019f3d69e

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, I am seeking that out to put it on fdroid and actually tried but ran into a few roadblocks.

I am tracking changes since v1.0.0 in the changelog. From here on out the changes are all public. The initial commit has no history because it was brand new, and the architecture was forked from terminal phone for cross compatibility.

[–] in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How can I contribute?

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I need ideas for what everyone wants. Features and niceties to make the expirence more polished. I have a limited set of devices that I can test on so finding bugs and edge cases is something I can fix, but limited to my environments/devices.

I've played with the ability to have a dedicated secure database built in for contacts but unsure if it's really needed and worth implementing.

[–] in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.social 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sounds good. I'll pull the latest build to my graphenOS test mule.

I'll target a secured db as a vault for contacts. That's a really good idea.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

A matrix bridge would be nice and could open up a large user base.

[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is sick! Thanks for sharing your project with us! I would have never guessed you could do voice over TOR but PTT was a clever solution. Its like the old nextel phones that had PTT. I wonder if its possible to remap the volume button to be a hardware PTT button.

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 12 points 1 month ago

Happy to contribute! So, currently (only while in the app for now) you can activate the mic with a double pressdown on volume if the setting is enabled.

My attempts to trigger the mic while outside the app came with a few unwanted side affects so I removed it for now until I find a solid way to do that.

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

This is stupidly cool omg

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What a small world! I made a TOR P2P messaging app using symmetric encryption POC in college! I was just getting around to re implementing it into something more polished!

Not sure if I have a reason too now!

Old college app, new project doesn't have much progress

https://github.com/Givlucas/noctua-messenger

[–] QuantumCheap@libretechni.ca 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I love the idea of the app! I must ask though, to what degree or extent was AI/LLM used in coding this project?

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 4 points 1 month ago

I see an em-dash on a comment in MainActivity.kt on line 278, so I'm guessing it was used extensively. Also, a "→" character on 291.

[–] 0485919158191@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Super cool!

[–] Everyday0764@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

why go with tor and not with i2p?

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

tor is actually a bit more secure than i2p from my understanding. mostly it has to do with the routing, which is both the strength and weakness of tor.

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

I would like to test a garlicphone varient. I'm not opposed to i2p, I am just alot more familiar with Tor integrations than i2p.

Onionphone uses prepackaged binaries from the guardian project. https://github.com/guardianproject/tor-android.

I would basically need to find the same thing, but for i2p.

[–] night_petal@piefed.social 6 points 1 month ago

This is extremely cool.

[–] shellington@piefed.zip 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wow so awesome going to try it out.

[–] shellington@piefed.zip 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nice a real step forward for private communication.

Would be awesome if it ever has a messaging section without having to make a call, still, an awesome start!

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago

I've put some thought into this. The biggest roadblock to P2P is 24/7 persistence. You have to be online.

I think the most straightforward path to this is having the ability to setup a mailbox sort of how the relay works but on a machine that's on a 24/7 stable connection. Because it's already cross compatible with Linux systems, it would make the most sense to have a dedicated mailbox there, and have it forward your messages that were missed while you were offline.

Once the mailbox is set up, it's just a matter of tieing the separate mailbox identity to forward messages to you once your online. Ideally integrate tors built in authorized client protocol to ensure only one person is authorized to the mailbox.

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Probably a bad idea to congest the limited bandwidth of Tor with voice chat.

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 60 points 1 month ago

The bandwidth is low by design. I've excluded files and images to keep it down as well. You could talk 24/7 only use MBs.

If we want Tor to grow we need useful applications useful for everyone. I doubt this will be widely adopted.

I've contributed a large amount of bandwidth to the network so why can't I use some?

[–] grue@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Creating more mainstream use-cases is how you get people to donate more bandwidth.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How does a regular person donate bandwidth?

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

By partaking in it.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Plain speech can be compressed pretty well. I'm not an expert by any means, but I suspect latency would be the bigger issue.

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Latency is a huge issue, but it goes away with the PTT model. I tried full duplex on initial prototyping but it was trash.

PTT solves this by simply forcing the listen, digest, then respond. You can expect about 2-3 seconds of delay from when you release the ptt, to when the other side hears it.

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[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, unless they use specific nodes given by the community, i think it's a bad idea

[–] ddssazsa@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's the selfhosted component of this?

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Self hosting your own private P2P voice service.

Optionally use your device as a Audio relay for group calls, in which case you become the 'server' to all connected clients.

[–] IratePirate@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Self hosting [...] P2P

You do realise that's a contradiction, right?

Unless you're hosting a TOR node (which is outside of the scope here and, in the case of exit nodes, extremely risky), there's nothing here that's relevant to self-hosting.

[–] Used_Gate@piefed.social 15 points 1 month ago

I don't agree with that. Both sides are acting as a server and a client, connecting via a onion service to either parties rendezvous. And then when you include the fact that you can become a relay, that is clearly self hosting a server in a pure sense.

There are no exit nodes involved in onion services. It all stays within the network.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Omg! I was just looking for a walkie talkie type app!

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

Impossible. Signal said they have no choice but to use AWS for this kind of thing.

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