LunaGramm
A desktop messenger with secret chats.
LunaGramm runs on Windows. It asks for no email address and no phone number, it does not record your IP address, and its secret chats are encrypted on your machine and decrypted on theirs. It is free.
Version 0.39.1 · 74 MB · portable, no installer
SHA-256 266b8378c632e9e45686e07ebdf78c2256e07d0d4c9ccacdacb603e78735c96b
Or from the update server the app itself uses: chat.lunagramm.site. Same file, same SHA-256 — that server limits how often it will hand it over, so the button above is the quicker one.
Before you download, five things it is not
- — It comes with no guarantees. It can lose messages, go offline, or stop existing. Do not put anything on it you cannot afford to lose. Settings has a button that downloads everything in your account.
- — Ordinary messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They are stored as plain text on the server, so whoever runs it could technically read them. Secret chats are the ones that are encrypted — they are a separate kind of conversation you start on purpose.
- — Windows only. No macOS build, no Linux build, no phone app.
- — Not available in Israel, Ukraine, Iran or Pakistan. The server refuses connections from those countries, going by the address you connect from.
- — No uptime promise. There is no company behind LunaGramm, moderation is not around the clock, and nobody guarantees the server is always up.
Installing it
Two steps, and one warning you should expect.
Windows will warn you about this file
When you run it you will see a blue box saying:
Windows protected your PC — Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognised app from starting.
That is SmartScreen telling you the file is not signed with a code-signing certificate. Certificates cost a few hundred euro a year and LunaGramm has not bought one, so every copy gets this message. To run it anyway: More info → Run anyway.
Being asked to click past a security warning is a normal thing for malware to ask, so
check the SHA-256 above against the file you downloaded if you would rather not take
anyone's word for it. In PowerShell:
Get-FileHash .\LunaGramm-0.39.1-portable.exe
1. Run it
It is a portable executable. Nothing is installed, nothing is written to the registry, and deleting the file removes the program. Your account lives on the server, not in the file.
2. Make an account
A username and a password. No email address, no phone number, no confirmation link. Leave the server box empty and the app connects to LunaGramm's own server.
What it does
The parts worth knowing about, described precisely.
Secret chats
ECDH on P-256 between the two devices, HKDF-SHA256 to a per-chat key, AES-256-GCM per message. The private key is generated so that it cannot be exported, even by the app that made it, and it never leaves the machine.
Which means: sign in somewhere else and your secret chats are not there, and losing that computer loses those messages for good. That is the design, not a gap in it.
Each secret chat shows a safety number. If yours and theirs match, your two apps hold each other's real keys and nothing is sitting in the middle.
What is not recorded
Your IP address. Not in a log, not against your account, not anywhere. Rate limits count addresses in memory for a few minutes and then forget them.
No email, no phone number, no real name, no location, no contact list. No analytics, no advertising, no trackers — there are none to turn off.
Guarding the account
Two-step verification adds a second password asked for after the first. A local passcode locks the window on your own computer. Settings lists every device signed in and can end any of them.
There is no password reset, because there is no email address to send one to. Forgetting the second password means losing the account.
The ordinary parts
Groups and channels, public or invite-only. Photos and video, sent one at a time or as an album. Voice messages. Polls. Replies, forwards, edits, reactions, pinned messages. Disappearing-message timers per chat, or a default for every new one.
Moons
A number attached to your account, spent inside the app. They are given out free and cannot be bought.
They are not money: not a currency, not an investment, and there is no way to cash them out, sell them or send them to anybody.
Reporting, including in secret chats
Any message can be reported from its menu. Your own app attaches the lines, decrypted, at the moment you report — which is the only way reporting can work on a conversation the server cannot read.
Moderators see what was attached and nothing else. Each line is marked with whether the server's own copy agrees, so a report cannot put words in somebody's mouth.
Where it is blocked
Settings has a proxy: SOCKS5 or HTTP, for messages, pictures, calls and updates alike. A proxy link opens straight into it, and links are posted in the Telegram channel.
If the main address cannot be reached at all, the app tries a second one through Cloudflare by itself.
Numbers
The limits you would otherwise find out by hitting them.
Getting hold of somebody
Privacy requests, abuse reports, copyright complaints and security reports should go to the email, so there is a record of them.
Found a security problem?
Write to support@lunagramm.site before telling anybody else, and give it a reasonable time to be fixed. Looking for holes in good faith is welcome and will not get your account frozen — use your own accounts, do not read or keep anybody else's data, do not degrade the service for other people, and do not run anything destructive.