Messages dissolve like ink in water — no trace on your screen, no readable trace on our servers. Avano is designed so even our servers can't link who you talk to. No phone number.
Encrypting what you say is a solved problem. What's left exposed is who you say it to, how often, and when — the map of your whole life. As laws like the EU's “Chat Control” push toward scanning private messages by default, Avano is built to minimize that pattern by design — so there's far less for anyone to collect in the first place.
Your identity is a key on your device. You pair by sending someone a one-time link that stops working once it is used — nothing ties the app to the real you.
End-to-end encrypted on unmodified, audited cryptography (libsignal) — with post-quantum protection on every message, both the key exchange and the ongoing ratchet. Only the other device can open it.
Servers hold sealed packets under random codes — they can't see who talks to whom. Avano is built to carry the two sides of a chat on different servers; that routing is not switched on yet, and on Android the app tells you per conversation whether the split is in force rather than letting you assume it.
Messages can fade on their own, on your device and on theirs — you set one timer, and it applies to everything you send after it. Nothing readable is kept on our servers either way.
Read a message and it dissolves — on your screen and in transit. Add a contact with a one-time link, never a number. This is the app's own design, redrawn for the web.
No jargon. Just the small, quietly amazing things Avano does for you.
Type furiously or sit silent — while the app is open, the wire looks identical either way. What it does not hide is that you opened it: a phone that is offline emits nothing, and we would rather say so.
While Avano is open your phone gives off a steady, even trickle of traffic — the same whether you're deep in a conversation or reading in silence. To anyone watching the network, a real message is indistinguishable from the quiet hum, so they can't tell how much you sent or when inside that session. What it does not hide is the session itself. A phone that is asleep, locked or offline sends nothing, and no amount of cover traffic makes a stopped stream look like a running one. We say that here rather than let you assume otherwise.
Send a photo or a document and it's shredded into identical locked pieces, each under its own random name and its own delete key, so nothing the server stores says which pieces belong to one file, how big it was, what kind it was, or who it's for. Only the person you sent it to can put them back together. The honest limit: the pieces go up back-to-back, so a server watching its own arrivals can still group a burst and estimate a size. Photos have their location and camera data stripped before a byte leaves your phone.
Reading your messages is already off the table. But most apps still see who you message, when, and how often — the quiet map of your whole life. Avano is built so even our own servers can't draw it.
Every friend already gets a different private mailbox to reach you on, so no server sees one address that is you. Rotating those mailboxes over time is built into the engine but is not switched on in the app yet — until it is, a mailbox is long-lived, and we would rather you knew that than assumed otherwise.
Phone lost, or stolen? Everything on it stays locked behind your passphrase, and someone who images the storage finds only noise — not your chats, not your contacts. It does not protect you against being made to unlock it. Nothing an app can do does, and Avano has no decoy or duress mode, so we say it here instead of letting you find out at the wrong moment.
Avano is built so that the two sides of a conversation ride different servers, run by different operators — so no one of them sees both ends. The routing that does this is not switched on yet. The mechanism is in the app, and on Android it tells you, for each conversation, whether the split is actually in force: while both sides land on one relay, it says so plainly rather than letting you assume otherwise. The second relay is live; wiring the routing to it is the work in front of us, and the iOS indicator is not built.
Same conversations, one relay each. The left server reads your life — who, when, how often. The Avano relay holds sealed, identical-size blocks under random codes it can't join. The table below is the receipts.
| Avano | Signal | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| End-to-end encrypted | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No phone number | Yes | No | No |
| Servers can't see your contacts | By design | Partial | No |
| IP hidden for all messages, by default | Built in | Calls only | No |
| Hides how much you message, in a session | Yes | No | No |
| Your address rotates on its own | Built, not yet on | — | — |
| Disappearing messages | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Post-quantum encryption | Yes | Yes | No |
| Locked if your phone is seized | Passphrase | No | No |
| Open source | Planned | Yes | No |
Most “private” apps promise the impossible. We won't — starting with the thing people are most surprised by. Avano posts no notifications, and nothing arrives while it is closed. The app locks itself when it leaves the foreground, and a locked Avano cannot poll, cannot subscribe and cannot even learn that mail is waiting. That is the defence that makes a seized phone worth so little, and the price of it is that you collect your messages when you open the app. Why we won't add push →
So we will never call Avano “untraceable” or “invisible.” We call it metadata-minimizing, and the threat model is published rather than promised — including the parts that do not flatter us. Read the threat model → · See which of our claims you can check yourself →
Avano is in active development. For the first builds only — nothing else, no tracking.