Rún – Private Messenger

Rún is a secure messenger built for people who refuse to compromise on privacy. Every message is end-to-end encrypted before it leaves your device, and the keys ratchet forward as you chat — so even if one key were ever exposed, the rest of the conversation stays sealed. No server, no company, and no government can read your conversations.

Rún requires no account, no phone number, and no email address. There is nothing to link back to your identity. Contacts are added in person by scanning QR codes, or through a vouched introduction from someone you already trust — no central directory, no contact discovery, no social graph.

All traffic is routed through the Tor network, hiding your IP address and location even from Rún's own relay. An observer monitoring your network sees only encrypted Tor traffic — they cannot tell who you are talking to or what you are saying. Messages are padded to fixed sizes, so not even the length of a message leaks.

Messages live in memory only — they are never written to disk. Leave a chat or close the app, and they are gone. There is no message history to scroll through, no archive to subpoena, and no backup to leak. The relay stores only temporary encrypted blobs it cannot read, in inboxes that expire on their own.

Your vault is encrypted at rest with AES-256 via SQLCipher, its key derived with Argon2id and protected by the device keychain, tied to this device only. You choose how hard it is to reach:

• Decent — quick PIN unlock, with relaxed auto-lock and self-wipe timers.
• Secure — the vault key is also bound to the Secure Enclave, behind Face ID or Touch ID. A seized phone strongly resists offline attacks.
• Maximum — the PIN is replaced by a strong passphrase and the timers are at their tightest. Even a fully imaged phone stays shut.

At every level Rún locks itself when idle, wipes after too many wrong unlock attempts, and self-destructs after a long stretch of inactivity — how strict is set by the level you choose. A wipe erases the encryption keys themselves, leaving nothing recoverable.

Group chats live only on their members' phones. Every group message is sent privately to each member — on the wire it is indistinguishable from a one-to-one chat, so no one watching can tell a group exists.

No analytics. No tracking. No advertising. No crash reporting. No cloud backups. Rún never phones home. By default it stays silent — no notifications — and you simply see your messages when you open the app. You can optionally turn notifications on; if you do, a content-free wake-up signal routes through Apple's push servers, which learn only that something arrived and when — never who it is from or what it says — and Rún tells you exactly this before you enable it.

Rún is built for journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and anyone who believes private conversation is a fundamental right.

Key features:
- End-to-end encryption with forward secrecy (AES-256-GCM + Double Ratchet)
- All traffic over Tor — your IP and location stay hidden
- No account, phone number, or email required
- In-person QR contact exchange and vouched introductions
- Group chats that are invisible on the wire
- Messages held in memory only — never stored on disk
- Encrypted local vault (SQLCipher, Argon2id, device keychain)
- Three protection levels: Decent, Secure, Maximum
- Secure Enclave-bound vault key behind Face ID or Touch ID (Secure)
- Passphrase instead of PIN (Maximum)
- Auto-lock, wipe on repeated wrong attempts, self-destruct on inactivity
- Message padding hides even message sizes
- No analytics, tracking, ads, or crash reporting
- No cloud backups — your data never leaves your device