Session review

Session is a highly secure, open source private messaging app that you can use on every device you own. We love the anonymity that Sessions offers, as it requires absolutely no personal information to sign up That said, slow text, inconsistent call quality and few community features mean the session isn’t as engaging as our Editors’ Choice winning signal. Signal manages to combine fun, user-friendly calling features with end-to-end encrypted messaging.

Can you believe the session?

Security should be at the forefront of every app marketed as a “privacy solution,” but it’s not always the case. The session does a lot to show that the user isn’t being fast and loose with the data. For one, all conversations in the app are end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) using the Session Protocol, which is based on an open-source crypto library. Additionally, the app does not request any personal data from users to create an account; You just need to create a username, add a contact or two and that’s it. No email address, name, credit card or phone number is required to start chatting. Even Signup requires a phone number to sign up.

Messages are pretty secure in sessions because each one goes through an onion-routing network that the company says is similar to Tor. Using a process called onion requests, no single server ever holds the destination or source of a message.

Who is funding and maintaining an app is important in establishing user trust, especially when it comes to privacy products Session is backed by the nonprofit digital privacy organization Oxen Privacy Tech Foundation, making it more attractive to privacy-conscious users than WhatsApp, which became a meta property in 2014.

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Getting started with the session

You can use Sessions on Android and iOS devices as well as Linux, macOS and Windows computers. We tested the app using a Samsung A71 5G phone and an iPhone 13 Pro.

As mentioned, Session does not require personal data during signup, and is unique among all the other private messaging apps we’ve reviewed. When you create a username, Session generates a 64-character-long user ID or a QR code that you can share with people you want to chat with in the app. After that, just scan your friends’ QR code or enter their user ID and start chatting. Session gives you a recovery phrase for your account and recommends saving it somewhere safe That way, if you need to log out or uninstall the app, you can retrieve your messages.

Session does not request access to your device’s contact list at any time. The app disables screenshots by default, though you can turn this setting off in the Privacy menu.

After signing up, you can choose how you want to receive message notifications from sessions Fast Mode gives you instant notifications, but they are routed through Google’s servers Slow mode allows the session to periodically check for new messages while running in the background on your device or computer

Session privacy settings

Since you reveal very little about yourself during sign-up, the app has some privacy settings. As mentioned, you can toggle the ability to turn a screenshot on and off. In testing, when an iOS user takes a screenshot of a chat, the chat partner receives a notification of it. When an Android user takes a screenshot of the same conversation, the iOS chat partner doesn’t get a notification, which isn’t ideal.

A welcome security feature we noticed in testing is that Session automatically removes EXIF ​​data from media files. This prevents other people from being able to see where and when you took a photo

Private messaging in session

We like the anonymous aspect of Sessions for privacy and security purposes, but it makes the app less practical for chatting with new people. And maybe that’s the point. The current iteration of the Session app is best for chatting without leaving a digital trail. The session is not for building an audience like Telegram or finding new friends like WhatsApp

You must know your friends’ user IDs or be physically close to them to scan their QR codes and add them to your contact list. This means you’ll probably use Sessions only to talk to people you know and trust, which is best for those with privacy concerns. The app hosts communities (explained more in a moment), but to even join most of them, you need to know the community’s URL or have its QR code to participate.

You can chat one-on-one using Conversations, which is standard E2EE private messaging. Like Signal and WhatsApp, Session keeps conversations in speech bubbles, and you can add GIPHY reaction GIFs or your own media files to the chat window. You can enable invisible messages with a wide range of durations, which is helpful.

Messages can sometimes take a long time (over two minutes) to get to the other party, and media files also often load slowly. Messaging on Signal and WhatsApp is instant, and those platforms use E2EE for their private messaging functions.

Group chat in session

You can add people to a session group chat by tapping Create a group in the app menu and clicking the contact you want to add. Group chat is E2EE and supports up to 100 participants. The group chat window is identical in functionality and appearance to the conversation window.

If you want to communicate with a larger group and possibly strangers, go to the Community tab Communities are self-hosted, so messages are stored on someone’s server somewhere. Here, messages are encrypted only in transit to the server, making the chat process less private.

During testing, we only saw activity in a few session-led community channels, which were announcement centers for new app features. As mentioned earlier, if you want to find more active community channels in the session, you need the community URL or QR code. Again, the focus is on privacy and security.

The app lacks many of the fun features like animated stickers and avatars found in the chat functions of Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. However, since the session is mainly about talking to people you already know, you might be able to amuse yourself. Sessions also lacks passive, large-scale broadcast features like WhatsApp status or Signal Stories.

Session voice and video chat

You can select voice and video calling through the privacy menu, but these functions are part of Session’s beta program. We found the ability to be a bit hit-or-miss in testing. To start a call, open a conversation with a contact and press the phone icon Video quality was a little grainy but usable for both the iOS and Android apps. However, the iOS user on the call could not hear the Android user’s audio and sometimes, it took several minutes to receive the call. We want to improve lag time and call quality before releasing these features from beta

Switching between a session video call and another app on the device caused the video to freeze, and as we’ve already mentioned, screenshot detection during calls and chatting was spotty. Currently, group calling is not an option for session users.

But again, the calling features are in beta. We hope the issues we found will be resolved soon.

Verdict: Try Sessions for texting IRL friends

Session uses end-to-end encryption by default, doesn’t require your personal information to sign up, and makes it super easy to chat privately without leaving too much information for snoops or criminals to use against you. This level of privacy also makes it nearly impossible to discover new people on the platform, which is a plus for privacy-conscious users with session goals. Although we like Session’s baked-in privacy and security measures, we highly recommend Editors’ Choice winner Signal because it blends strong privacy policies with helpful community-building features.