Sonder.

Messenger

Every dot is someone’s life. Tap one

iOS · Android

sonder /ˈsɒn.dər/
The sense that everyone you message has a life and a story of their own.

A messenger we built for ourselves. No ads. No subscriptions.

Download Sonder for iOS on TestFlight Download Sonder for Android (APK)

(How Sonder started)

We looked for a messenger that fit us: the features we need, no ads, and no sense that something is always being sold to you. We barely found one. So we decided to build our own app.

Some services monetize your data. Others push premium subscriptions. Others work or don’t depending on the country.

It doesn’t have to beat everyone on day one, but it will be ours. We add what we actually need, not what’s expected of every messenger.

(What’s here today)

  1. Direct chats

    One-to-one messaging. Hide a chat or clear history on your side, and it doesn’t change things for the other person.

  2. Replies and reactions

    A quote right in the message, a reaction in one tap, pinned messages.

  3. Voice

    Sometimes it’s easier to say it. Recording and playback with a waveform.

  4. Photo and video

    A photo lands in the chat right away, video is compressed before sending. If it fails, send it again.

  5. Groups

    A shared chat for several people. Invite members and set roles.

Illustration with sample data

(How it works)

Straight talk, no marketing claims you can’t verify.

Our service, our circle.

Sonder is a closed community: you talk with people who are also on Sonder. It’s not an open network for the whole internet.

Messages live on our servers.

Chats are cloud-based so history follows you across devices after sign-in. The connection is protected (HTTPS, like a normal browser). There’s no end-to-end encryption in the current version: that makes sync simpler, and we say so plainly. Privacy Policy

We don’t sell data or run ads.

No subscriptions for a “normal” experience. If that changes in a material way, we’ll update the policy and say so.

Open technologies, yes. Public source, not yet.

Sonder is built on the open Matrix protocol and familiar open components. We haven’t published our own code yet; when we do, it’ll be noted here.

We don’t promise to become the biggest. We promise to stay honest.

Download Sonder for iOS on TestFlight Download Sonder for Android (APK)

Support will come later, inside Sonder itself. The web version is closed for now.