Email support@strongchat.app. Reports are answered within 24 hours, everything else within seven days.
The Nearby tab only shows other StrongChat users who are within about 100 yards of you right now, with the app open. If you're the only person nearby using it, the tab will be empty — that's expected, not a fault.
To add someone who isn't with you, tap Invite someone and send them the link. Once you're contacts, you can message from anywhere.
If someone is next to you and isn't appearing: check that both phones have location permission enabled for StrongChat, that scanning is turned on in the app, and that both are connected (the header says so).
That's deliberate in two cases. If you've set an app lock, previews are hidden — a locked app shouldn't narrate your messages on the lock screen. Turn the lock off in Settings if you'd rather see previews.
Otherwise, check that notifications are enabled for StrongChat in the iOS Settings app, and that you've opened StrongChat at least once since installing or updating it.
If your contact was offline, we hold the encrypted photo for up to 48 hours and deliver it when they next open the app. If more than 48 hours have passed, send it again.
You'll see a warning when a contact's encryption key changes. That happens legitimately when they reinstall the app or switch phones — but it's also what an impostor would look like. Before sending anything sensitive, confirm it's really them: open the conversation menu and compare the six safety words, or use the in-person tone check when you're together. Until you do, the app drops that contact's trust badge rather than leaving it in place — it will not vouch for a key nobody has confirmed.
The sender split the key across people they chose, so the message can't be opened until one of them releases their piece. Nobody can read it before then, including your own phone. If nobody helps within 48 hours it expires and the bubble says so — ask the sender to send it again, since they don't keep a readable copy either.
Reinstalling throws away every conversation key on your phone, and the other side doesn't know that yet. The two phones renegotiate automatically the next time both are connected, and anything the other person sent that you couldn't read is sent again. If a conversation still looks stuck after both of you have had the app open, send a message into it — that forces a fresh session.
In Settings, What our server knows shows exactly what we hold about you, live from our database. From there you can delete your message history, or delete your account entirely. Deletion from the live database is immediate and cannot be undone — you can watch that screen report nothing afterwards. Two caveats we would rather you heard from us: our nightly backups are kept for fourteen days, so that is when the last copy goes, and reports are kept for moderation and are not removed with the account.
Any message can be reported from inside the app, and any person can be blocked. Reporting someone blocks them straight away. We review every report within 24 hours.
If you used Sign in with Apple, sign in on your new phone and your account and contacts come back — past messages don't, because we hold no readable copy of them. Your groups don't come back on their own either: a group exists only on its members' phones, so the app asks the other members to send it back, and if none of them opens their phone there is nothing on our side to restore from. If you didn't link Sign in with Apple, the account can't be recovered by anyone, including us. That's the trade the app makes.