When you have internet access, Briar routes everything through Tor. I wrote about Tor back in May 2005 in one of my first blog posts here - it has been around a while! Tor bounces your traffic through a series of volunteer-run computers around the world, stripping away identifying information at each step. No one watching the network can tell who you are or who you’re talking to, only that you’re using Tor. This protects both message content and the fact that you’re communicating with a specific person, which is often just as sensitive as the message itself.
When the internet goes down, Briar switches to local connections. Over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, two phones running Briar sync messages directly if they’re within range, roughly 50 feet for Bluetooth, farther for Wi-Fi. This matters during internet shutdowns, protests, or disasters where infrastructure is gone. If local wireless isn’t available either, you can load messages onto a USB stick or SD card and physically carry them to another device.
Briar can also relay messages hop by hop through your contact list. Say you want to reach a friend across town and there’s no internet. If a mutual contact is physically moving between you and your friend, their phone will carry your message and deliver it automatically when they get within Bluetooth range. No one manually copies files. The phone handles it in the background. The catch is distance and trust. Every relay hop requires someone physically walking between locations. It is not a wireless chain stretching across a city. It is more like a postal relay where trusted people carry the mail on foot. And it only works through people already in your contact list. Random phones nearby can’t intercept or relay your messages.
Adding a contact requires scanning each other’s QR codes in person. This exchanges cryptographic keys, the mathematical credentials your devices use to verify identity and encrypt messages. No usernames, no phone number lookup, no central directory. You can’t connect with someone you haven’t met face to face. That’s a feature, not a bug.
All messages are stored encrypted on your device only. Briar holds none of your data. Lose your phone, forget your password, or uninstall the app and your account and messages are gone. No recovery. That’s a deliberate tradeoff.
The app supports one-to-one messaging, group forums, and blogs, all distributed the same way. Forum messages can propagate indirectly. If you and contact A belong to the same forum, and you later come within range of contact B, also a forum member, your phone syncs forum posts to B automatically. Private messages work differently; they only sync directly between sender and recipient. The Briar user manual covers all features in detail.
Briar is Android only; right now as far as I can determine, no iOS version is planned. You can download it from Google Play or F-Droid. Battery drain is higher than standard messaging apps, especially over Tor. Both parties need to be online or physically nearby for delivery. Bluetooth range of 50 feet means it is not a true city-wide mesh network. Someone has to physically move between groups to carry data.
Briar is built for journalists, activists, and anyone operating where surveillance is a real threat or infrastructure can’t be trusted.
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