Private enough for gossip. Simple enough for everyone.

Nowza protects your voice the way the most private texting apps protect your messages. What you say is locked on your device and unlocked only on the devices of the people you're talking to. Not even we can hear it.

1. Your phone or watch locks what you say as you say it.
2. Nowza's servers pass it along, still locked. We don't have the key.
3. Your friend's phone or watch is the only place it's unlocked and played.

Replies make the same trip back: your friend's device locks them, and only yours unlocks them.

The only one who hears it is the one you sent it to

Every Nowza message is end-to-end encrypted. That means your phone or watch scrambles your voice before it leaves your hand, using a key that only your friend's devices have. In a group, only the other members' devices can unlock it.

Along the way, it passes through our servers so it can reach your friend quickly, but to us it's just noise. We can't listen to it, and neither can anyone else who gets near our servers. Each message also carries your device's signature, so your friend's app knows it really came from you.

If a friend's keys ever change, for example when they get a new phone, the app lets you know.

No recordings. No transcripts.

Your voice is never saved on our servers. We pass the locked message along only until it reaches your friend's phone or watch, which usually takes a few seconds. If their device has bad coverage or is turned off for a while, Nowza keeps trying for up to 24 hours: the locked message waits on your phone and goes as soon as theirs is back.

Your conversations aren't saved on your phone or watch either. There's no chat history to scroll back through, no transcript and no recording of what anyone said.

A device keeps just two things, both still locked and neither for more than a day. One is your friend's last message, so you can replay it if you missed a word; when they talk again, the new one replaces it. The other is a message that hasn't been heard yet, which waits on your friend's phone or watch (or on yours, if theirs can't be reached) until it plays.

To us, you're a random code

You sign in to Nowza with your Apple account on an iPhone, or your Google account on Android. Apple or Google tells us only that it's you again, using an account number of their own. We don't get or keep your email address, and we never ask for your real name, phone number or birthday.

Behind the scenes, Nowza gives you a made-up ID that looks something like u_Q3vX9kTb2LmPz7Rw, and that's who you are in our systems. Your friends see the screen name you pick, which doesn't have to be your real name. Nothing in Nowza ties your account to your email or to who you are in real life.

Strangers can't find you

There's no way to search for people in Nowza: no directory, no looking people up by name, no "people you may know." Nowza never looks at your contacts and doesn't know where you are.

The only way to become friends is a one-time invite link that one of you sends the other, usually in a text. So to friend you, someone has to already have your phone number, and even then nothing happens unless you tap their link and accept. That keeps out the randos and creeps that public apps attract.

• Only your friends can ring you.
• Each invite link works once and expires after a week, so send yours only to the person you mean to invite.
• You can remove a friend, block someone or report them at any time.

You pay with money, not with your data

Nowza is a subscription, and that's the whole business. There are no ads. We don't track you across other apps or websites, and we don't sell your data or share it with data brokers. Your voice isn't the product. Nowza is.

What we can see

Being straight with you matters more than a slogan, so here's what our servers do know, and why:

• Who your friends are, and who talks to whom and when. We need that to ring the right person. We never know what was said.
• Your screen name and mascot. Your friends see them, and so do the people in groups you join. Your mascot stands in for you, so there's no profile photo.
• Whether you're busy. If you're on a call or have Do Not Disturb on, your friend sees "Busy" or "Do Not Disturb" instead of "No reply." That's all that's shared, and you can turn it off in Settings.
• How the app is running. Things like how long a ring took to connect, your device model, engine errors, and sound level so we can make Nowza faster and more reliable. These records never include audio or names, and they're deleted after 30 days.

You're in charge

You can delete your account in the app's Settings at any time, and your friends list, devices and settings go with it. On Android without the app, you can delete it on the web.

For the technically curious

Here's what's under the hood, for anyone who wants it:

• A new key for every message. Each message gets its own random 256-bit key, used once. The audio is encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305.
• Sealed to each device. That key is sealed to the public key of each of your friend's devices (in a group, every member's devices) with HPKE (RFC 9180), using 256-bit X25519 elliptic-curve keys, HKDF-SHA256 and ChaCha20-Poly1305.
• Signed by the sender. Every message is signed with the sending device's Ed25519 key. The signature covers the conversation, who it's from and to, and when it was sent, so a message can't be altered, redirected to someone else or replayed later.
• Keys that never leave your devices. Keys are made on your device, and private keys stay there. On iPhone and Apple Watch they're kept in the Keychain and not synced to iCloud. On Android they're encrypted with a key held in the Android Keystore and left out of backups.
• Keys that expire. Each device regularly replaces its encryption key and deletes the old private key soon after, which limits what any one stolen key could ever unlock.
• A chain of trust. Your phone's identity key certifies the keys of your watch, and your friends' apps check that chain before they trust a key. If a friend's keys change, the app tells you.
• Proven tools, not homemade ones. The cryptography comes from the platforms' own well-tested libraries: Apple's CryptoKit, and Google's Tink on Android.
• Encrypted on the way, too. Every connection to our servers also uses TLS.