CruiseLink: Offline Group Chat

Message your family on a cruise ship without buying the ship's internet.

CruiseLink is a free group chat for people travelling together on a cruise. It does not use the internet at all. Your phones pass messages straight to each other over Bluetooth and the ship's own Wi-Fi network, so nobody has to buy a wifi package to stay in touch with the people they came with.

No account. No subscription. No sign-up. Install it, start a group, send everyone a link.

WHAT IT DOES
• Group chat with the people you are travelling with, onboard, with no internet
• Ping — one tap for "Where are you?", "Come to me", "Dinner soon"
• Meet — suggest a place and a time, and see who is coming
• Looking for someone — every phone in the group helps find them, and their phone alerts them
• Works between iPhone and Android, so it does not matter who has what phone

HOW IT WORKS
Messages travel phone to phone over Bluetooth when you are near each other, and over the ship's local Wi-Fi network where the ship lets guests reach each other — which on many ships works without an internet package, because the portal charges for the internet rather than for the ship's own network. If anyone does have a connection, it uses that too. You never choose; it uses whatever works.

A message is also carried by other phones in your group. Someone walking from the pool deck to dinner carries your messages with them, so a note reaches a person who was never in range of your phone.

THE HONEST LIMITS
• Everyone must install it before you sail, while you still have a normal connection. Nothing installs at sea.
• It reaches your own group, not the whole ship and not strangers.
• It is not instant across a whole ship. A message travels when phones come near enough, directly or carried by someone moving between you.

WHO IT IS FOR
Families and groups of friends on a cruise who are tired of buying a wifi package each, waiting at the cabin phone for everyone to get back to their rooms, or losing each other for an afternoon. It works on P&O, Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Princess, MSC, Norwegian, Disney, Celebrity and the rest, because it does not depend on the cruise line at all.

It is also useful anywhere else a signal disappears — a festival, a hike, a flight once the crew says devices may be used.

PERMISSIONS
Android requires the location permission before any app may scan for nearby Bluetooth devices. CruiseLink uses it for exactly that. It never records where you are and never sends a location anywhere. Bluetooth and notifications are the other two it asks for.

PRIVACY
Messages are sealed between your group's phones. Diagnostics never carry message text or names. What is stored, and for how long, is at https://cruiselink.app/privacy

Free, from Youell Systems Ltd. https://cruiselink.app

Recent changes:
Notifications now work on Android. Until this build CruiseLink could not wake your phone when a message arrived while the app was closed. Now it can.

And when a group's key changes, the new key now travels over the internet as well as phone to phone — so someone you haven't been near stays in the group instead of quietly dropping out.