Your words are encrypted before they ever leave the device.
No server. No account. No cloud. HushHush pairs two phones in person, wraps every message in a four-layer cipher cascade, and keeps everything inside your HushHush, which only your password can open.
Pairing happens in person.
There is no directory, no phone number, no username to look up. Two devices meet face to face and exchange a QR code. That single scan establishes a shared secret chain — and nothing about it ever touches a server.
The scanner learns the creator's identity from the QR; the creator learns the scanner's on the encrypted reply. Two-way linking completes without any third party ever seeing who is talking to whom.
Because contacts are only ever added by you — in person by QR, or by a one-time expiring invite you send over a channel you already control — there is no directory to search, no address book to leak, no server to subpoena, and no metadata trail describing your social graph.
Four ciphers, in a shuffled order.
Every message is encrypted four times over — by four independent ciphers, applied in an order that is reshuffled for each message. Breaking one algorithm does not get you the plaintext; it gets you the input to the next.
The same cascade does double duty. It is the cipher for manual mode — where you copy the ciphertext out and paste it into any app — and it is the symmetric core inside the Double Ratchet used for automation mode.
Keys are derived on the device with Argon2id and HKDF-SHA-512. Your password is never stored, not even as a hash of your HushHush key.
Every message gets a fresh key.
Automation chats run on a Double Ratchet. Each message derives brand-new keys and the previous ones are destroyed — so a key captured today cannot decrypt yesterday's messages, and it cannot decrypt tomorrow's.
The Double Ratchet is the automatic default for automation chats, so every message gets a fresh key. Post-quantum protection is a separate, per-contact choice made when you pair in person — it does not ride the ratchet, and there is no global setting. On an automated chat a message therefore carries one or the other, not both: the ratchet's per-message forward secrecy, or the post-quantum layer if you switch that contact over to it. Either way it never silently drops to a weaker path — if the forward-secret channel is unavailable, the message waits rather than going out downgraded.
The channel only ever carries ciphertext.
Whatever pipe the message travels through, it travels as an opaque blob. HushHush works two ways — and in both, the transport never sees a single character of plaintext.
In manual mode you paste the ciphertext wherever you like — the recipient pastes it back into HushHush to read it. In automation mode, HushHush rides a real transport (Telegram over native TDLib, Matrix, or email) that carries only the ciphertext.
The plaintext exists in exactly two places: on your screen before you send, and on the recipient's after they decrypt. Nowhere in between.
Everything lives in your HushHush, on your device.
Messages, contacts, and keys are held inside a single blob on the device, encrypted under a key derived with Argon2id. There is no account to create, no cloud to sync to, and nothing reporting your usage back to us.
On device, your HushHush persists straight to a file so a force-quit can't lose recent writes. The blob is indistinguishable from random — which is exactly what makes the next part possible.
A second password opens a decoy.
If you are ever compelled to unlock, a duress password opens a separate decoy HushHush instead of your real one. Both are encrypted identically, so the two blobs are forensically indistinguishable.
The method, end to end.
Six steps, no server anywhere in the loop. Context stays on the device that created it.
Meet in person
A QR scan establishes a shared chain. No directory, no phone number, no lookup.
Four-layer cascade
Four independent ciphers in a per-message shuffled order, keyed on device.
Fresh key each message
The Double Ratchet advances forward. Past keys are destroyed, never reused.
Opaque in transit
Paste it anywhere, or ride Telegram, Matrix or email. The channel sees only ciphertext.
Your HushHush
Encrypted under a key derived with Argon2id. No account, no cloud, no analytics of ours. Password never stored.
Plausible deniability
A duress password opens a decoy. The decoy and your real HushHush are forensically indistinguishable.
Your HushHush never trusts the network.
Install HushHush on both phones, pair once in person, and keep it HushHush in every app you already use.