/private/var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.dbMessage databases
Messaging apps keep conversations in SQLite files like this one. Deleted rows often survive in free space.
Available on the App Store · iPhone
OUT Messenger — the private iPhone messenger with no chat historySay it.Then it's gone.
OUT keeps your messages in memory, not in a chat archive on your phone. They disappear 10 minutes after they’re read, and unread messages expire within 24 hours. No phone number needed. End-to-end encrypted.
- No chat archive
- Held in memory (RAM)
- End-to-end encrypted
- Post-quantum PQXDH
- No phone number
M
mayaVanish 10 min after reading
Timer shortened for the demo · in the app, 10 minutes after reading
The film
One message. One take. Gone.
Watch a single message leave your phone, cross the galaxy end-to-end encrypted, get read, and disappear from both phones. No phone number, nothing written to disk. This is exactly how OUT works.
0:00
What a phone remembers
Your phone keeps more than you think.
Encryption protects a message while it travels. Once it lands, most messengers write it to a database on the phone, and iOS quietly keeps extra traces of its own: notification history, app activity, usage timelines.
Forensic examiners know exactly where to look. In the case against Paul Manafort, investigators read his WhatsApp messages from an iCloud backup. In the Oath Keepers trial, around 850 Signal chats were pulled from a single phone. And in 2026, a Texas court heard how deleted Signal messages were recovered from an iPhone’s notification database, even though the app itself had been removed.
These are not rare exceptions. Cases like these happen all over the world, every day. Forensic experts use tools from companies such as Cellebrite and Magnet Forensics to get past a phone’s protection, copy its storage and rebuild entire conversation histories, including messages the owner believed were deleted.
OUT is built so that none of those places is where your conversations live.
Lab report · 10 October 2026
We tested it on a real iPhone.
The same words in WhatsApp and in OUT. Then a plain and an encrypted iPhone backup, and a search of every byte: 19.4 GB, 22,351 files.
WhatsApp6 of 6
test messages recovered from the encrypted backup, with direction and exact time.
OUT0
messages, photos or contacts in either backup. Its only file: 196 bytes of settings.
A backup test, not a full forensic extraction. Method, file paths, tools and limits are in the full report.
The lab test
We ran the extraction. Nothing came out.
A full file system extraction, the same method examiners use on seized phones. A typical messenger gives up thousands of messages, including the ones you deleted. OUT gives up nothing, because nothing was ever written down.
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Other messengers can be read. OUT Messenger can’t.
Pick a phone and run the same forensic extraction on it.
Extraction SummaryChats
ExtractionFull File System
ModeliPhone 15 Pro
Hash pending
Ready to extract.
0Messages
0Chats
0Notifications with text
0Message databases
0Attachments
0Cloud backup found
ConversationDetailsAttachments
Run an extraction to see what an examiner would find.
Illustration modelled on commercial forensic software. Names, numbers and messages are examples, not from a real case.
How it works
How disappearing messages work in OUT.
1
You send it
Your message is encrypted on your iPhone and held in working memory. OUT does not save decrypted messages to its files, your photo library or a chat backup.
2
They read it
It arrives in real time and is shown from memory. Sent, Delivered and Read states keep you in sync. Once it’s read, a small ring starts counting down.
3
It’s released
Ten minutes after reading, the message is gone. Unread copies expire within 24 hours. No history piles up on the phone.
0:00 read5:0010:00 gone
Ten minutes after reading is long enough for a real conversation and short enough that nothing piles up. There is no archive growing in the background, because there is no background.
New in OUT 1.2 · Your galaxy
Everyone in their place.
Your chats are a calm galaxy. You are the light at the centre, and every contact is a planet with a place of its own. The people you talk with most sit closest. Nothing orbits and nothing jumps around when a message arrives, so your thumb always knows where to go.
Five contacts or five thousand.
Planets spiral out from you like seeds in a sunflower, so the sky never crowds. Drag to travel, pinch to see everyone, double-tap the sky to come home.
Alive, never busy.
Each planet turns slowly on its own axis, with storms drifting across its face. Behind them, stars move at three different depths as you travel.
Never miss a message.
A planet with something new glows in the colours of your O ring. If it is out of view, an arrow at the edge of the sky flies you straight to it.
A planet’s colours come from that person’s security key, so the same person is the same planet on every iPhone. Prefer a plain list? It is one tap away, next to search.
Screenshot shield
Private chats don’t make headlines.
It keeps happening. A private conversation between influencers, business partners or colleagues is quietly screenshotted, then posted on social media or quoted by news portals. OUT is built so that your conversations can’t be captured and published later.
Screenshots come out dark.
Capture an OUT chat and the picture holds only a glass O ring in the night sky: “Protected by OUT”. Not one word of the conversation.
They know you tried.
The other person sees a notice in the chat the moment a screenshot is taken. No silent copies, no surprises.
Recordings stay dark too.
Screen recordings and screen mirroring show the same dark panel, and a recording that starts mid-chat erases the open conversation.
No app can stop someone photographing a screen with a second camera. OUT removes the easy, silent copy, which is how most private chats end up in public.
New in OUT 1.2 · Is it really you?
Not sure it’s really them? Ask.
A friend suddenly asks for money, a password or a document. Is it them, or someone holding their unlocked phone? Tap the orb at the top of the chat and ask. Their iPhone shows one question, and only their own Face ID or Touch ID can answer it.
Only their face can answer.
There is no passcode button. Someone who knows the phone’s code, or found it unlocked, cannot confirm. All they can do is say it wasn’t them.
Only yes or no leaves the phone.
No photo is taken and no face or fingerprint data is sent. The answer travels end-to-end encrypted, like every message, and is gone in two minutes.
Know when Face ID changed.
If a new face or fingerprint was added on their iPhone since the last check, OUT tells you, so a borrowed passcode can’t quietly become a borrowed identity.
Only people you have saved can ask, so strangers cannot use it to see whether your OUT is online. It confirms who is holding the phone right now; to verify a new contact’s security key, scan their QR code in person.
What we leave out
Privacy by subtraction.
No chat archive. Anywhere in the app.
Other messengers treat your history as data to keep. OUT keeps message content in memory instead of a permanent chat archive on your iPhone. A forensic tool can only find what was written down, and OUT is designed not to write your conversations down.
RAM only
Text, photos and voice messages are held in working memory and released when their timer runs out.
Silent alerts
Notifications reveal neither the message nor the sender’s name, so the system’s notification history has nothing to keep.
No phone number
Create an OUT ID and choose a username. No address book upload, no SIM tied to your account.
A fixed lifespan
Ten minutes after reading, 24 hours if unread. There is no “keep forever” option to forget about.
No cloud backup
OUT makes no chat backup to iCloud or anywhere else. There is no archive copy to request.
Post-quantum end-to-end encryption
Messages are encrypted between the participating devices, with post-quantum PQXDH key agreement. A live check lets you confirm you are talking to the right person.
Private chats and small groups
Talk one-to-one or in a private group of up to eight people. Reply, react, and share photos and voice messages that vanish too.
Coming soon · OUT Channels Soon
Broadcast without a trace.
Most broadcast channels quietly build a list of everyone who follows them. OUT Channels can’t, because there is no list. A channel is your own pulsar in the OUT galaxy: post news, deals or updates to everyone who holds the link. Every post, photo, comment and reaction disappears on its own after 1, 7 or 30 days.
- 0subscriber lists
- 0readable posts on our server
- 1 · 7 · 30days, then it’s gone
- 500comments per post
Read without being seen.
Reading a channel needs no account and sends no account details to OUT. The channels you follow are kept on your iPhone, never linked to your OUT account on our server. No subscriber list exists. Not for us, and not even for the owner.
Encrypted end to end.
The channel key travels inside the link and never reaches our server. OUT stores only encrypted posts, photos and comments that it cannot open. Even the channel’s name and picture are sealed.
A conversation under every post.
Readers react and comment under posts, signed with their @name. Questions go privately to the owner, and “Ask privately” opens an ordinary OUT chat that vanishes like every other.
Nothing left to archive.
Every post carries its own clock. When it runs out, the post and everything under it are gone, from the channel and from every phone. Screenshots of a channel come out dark, too.
OUT Channels are coming in a later update of the app. Report anything illegal from inside the app or write to info@outmessenger.com.
A different mindset
A different mindset
Other apps ask how long you want to keep your messages. We asked why keep them at all.
| Feature | Typical messenger | OUT |
|---|---|---|
| Where messages live | Database on disk | Memory only |
| How long they last | Until you delete them | 10 min after reading |
| Deleted messages | Often recoverable | No chat archive to recover |
| Notification previews | Cached by the system | No text, no sender name |
| To sign up you need | A phone number | A username |
| Contacts upload | Usually asked | Never |
| Cloud backups | Often on | None |
| Screenshots | Full chat, silently | Come out dark |
| Broadcast channels | Follower list kept | No subscriber list |
Who OUT is for
For conversations that matter.
Journalists and sources
Protect the people who trust you. A seized or lost phone should not become a list of your sources.
Lawyers and clients
Privileged conversations deserve more than “delete for everyone”. OUT keeps no chat history to hand over.
Executives and deal teams
Talk through deals, boards and negotiations without building a permanent record on every phone involved.
Anyone with a private life
Your family, your health, your relationships. Some conversations are nobody else’s business, ever.
Questions
Straight answers.
Anything else? Read the Privacy Policy or write to info@outmessenger.com.
What is OUT Messenger?
OUT Messenger is a private messaging app for iPhone. It keeps message content in memory instead of a permanent chat archive, deletes messages after they are read, and lets you sign up without a phone number.
How long do OUT messages last?
Every message disappears 10 minutes after it is read. Unread copies expire within 24 hours. Content can disappear sooner if iOS closes the app or you erase it.
Can forensic tools like Cellebrite recover OUT messages?
OUT is designed so there is no chat database or backup for an extraction tool to parse or carve. Message content is held in memory and notifications carry no text. No app can promise that iOS or a recipient never makes a copy, but OUT limits the history that exists in the first place. See what a real iPhone backup kept in our backup forensics test.
Is OUT end-to-end encrypted?
Yes. Message content is encrypted between the participating devices, using post-quantum PQXDH key agreement, and a live check lets you verify who you are talking to. Our relay only moves encrypted envelopes it cannot read.
Why no phone number?
A phone number ties your account to your real identity and your contacts. OUT uses an OUT ID and a username you choose, and never uploads your address book. You decide who knows your username.
What is “Is it really you?”
In a chat with a saved contact you can ask their iPhone to confirm it is really them. Their phone asks for Face ID or Touch ID, with no passcode option, so someone holding their unlocked phone cannot pass as them. Only the yes or no answer is sent, end-to-end encrypted. No photo or biometric data leaves the phone.
Does OUT work with hundreds of contacts?
Yes. Every contact keeps a fixed place in your galaxy, with the people you talk with most closest to you. Drag and pinch to move through it, search by name, or switch to a plain list with one tap.
Is OUT free?
Yes. Text messages, photos, voice messages up to 60 seconds and PDF files up to 6 MB are free for everyone. There are no in-app purchases in this version of OUT.
Can someone screenshot an OUT chat and post it online?
No. Screenshots, screen recordings and screen mirroring of OUT show only a dark “Protected by OUT” panel, never the conversation, and the other person sees a notice that a screenshot was taken. A recording that starts mid-chat erases the open conversation. OUT is built so that private chats can’t be captured and later published on social media or news sites.
Can the other person still save what I wrote?
Not with a screenshot. Screenshots and screen recordings of OUT come out dark, showing only “Protected by OUT”, and you are told when someone tries. No app can stop a person photographing the screen with a second camera, but OUT removes the easy, silent copy and leaves no chat archive on the phones. Who you talk to is still your call.
What if I need to keep something?
Then OUT is the wrong place for it, and that’s on purpose. Write it down somewhere you choose. OUT is for conversations that shouldn’t outlive the moment.
Is OUT meant for hiding crimes?
No. OUT is for people who believe a private conversation should stay private: journalists, lawyers, executives, activists and anyone who doesn’t want a lost or stolen phone to become a transcript of their life. OUT is for adults 18+, has zero tolerance for abuse, and every chat has report and block.
What are OUT Channels?
OUT Channels let you broadcast news, deals or updates to everyone who holds your channel link. Posts, photos, comments and reactions are end-to-end encrypted and disappear on their own after 1, 7 or 30 days. They are coming in a later update of the app.
Are OUT Channels anonymous? Can I see who reads my channel?
No. Nobody can, and that is the point. Reading a channel needs no account and sends no account details to OUT. There is no subscriber list, not for OUT and not even for the owner. Comments and reactions are signed with the reader’s @name, so readers who join the conversation choose to be seen.
Can OUT read channel posts?
No. The channel key travels inside the link and never reaches our server. OUT stores only encrypted posts, photos and comments, including the channel’s name and picture, and cannot open them.
How many people can read a channel?
There is no reader list, so OUT does not count readers. Each post takes up to 5,000 reactions and 500 comments.
How long does a channel live?
As long as its owner keeps it, with a post at least every 180 days. Posts themselves vanish on their own after 1, 7 or 30 days, together with their comments and reactions.
Which devices does OUT run on? Where can I download it?
OUT is built for iPhone and is available on the App Store. Search for “OUT Messenger”.
Talk freely. Leave nothing behind.
Download OUT for iPhone and have your first conversation that nobody can read back.
Free to download · iPhone
Questions? info@outmessenger.com