nearbychat.app · Messaging · peer-to-peer
Offline chat and games, phone to phone
A peer-to-peer app for chatting, group chats and games with people around you, with no internet, servers or accounts. My own product, made for flights, festivals and anywhere without signal.
- Role
- My own product: idea, design, build and release
- Type
- iOS app
- Industry
- Messaging · peer-to-peer
- See it
- App Store ↗
The idea
I built Nearby for the moments regular chat apps fail: on a flight, at a festival or abroad without data. The people you want to talk to are often right next to you, so Nearby connects your phones directly.
The challenge
Building a chat app without the internet means solving everything a server normally does. Nearby had to:
- find people nearby and connect automatically, without accounts or phone numbers,
- support group chats and games directly between phones, with no server in the middle,
- keep running in the background without draining the battery,
- keep every conversation private, on the device and nowhere else.
What I delivered
For people chatting
- An inbox of people nearby, with requests to filter strangers.
- One-on-one and group chats with everyone in range.
- Photo sharing over a direct connection.
- Five built-in two-player games for when you’re offline anyway.
- Go invisible any time.
Under the hood
- Direct peer-to-peer connections between phones in range.
- Chats stay on the device and resume automatically when people are back in range.
- Runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision.
- Available in English, Spanish and Russian.
Results
Zero data collected
The App Store privacy label confirms it: no servers, no accounts, no tracking.
Shipped and updated
Live on the App Store as a one-time purchase, no subscription.
Four Apple platforms
Runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision.
Live
Try it yourself
Get Nearby on your iPhone, switch on airplane mode and message a friend next to you.
Built to hold up
Nothing to go down
There is no server behind Nearby. Phones connect directly to each other, so it works where other chat apps can’t.
Private by design
Messages travel directly between phones and never touch the cloud, so there is no central store of conversations to leak.
Built to run all day
Low-energy connections keep it running in the background without draining the battery.