Getting started with Chat
Find your way around TACENZA Chat – the main pages, starting a conversation, joining a group, checking safety numbers and installing the app.
This page shows you around TACENZA Chat once you have an account: where things are, how to write to someone, how to join or make a group, and how to check that nobody is sitting between you and the people you talk to. If you don’t have an account yet, start with Create a TACENZA Chat account.
Find your way around
The navigation is a rail on the left on wide screens and a tab bar on phones.
| Page | What’s there |
|---|---|
| Home | A greeting, what needs you (requests, join requests, changed safety numbers), recent chats, a Get started checklist and Tacenza News |
| Chats | All your conversations, with filters for All, Unread, Groups and People |
| Activity | Mentions, replies and reactions to you, collected by your devices |
| Discover | Public groups whose owners chose to list them |
| Saved | Your Saved messages chat and your bookmarks |
| You | Your profile |
| Settings | Everything else – see Managing your account |
The New button opens New message, New group, Join with a link and Bot Studio. Press Ctrl + K (or Cmd + K on a Mac) to search everything on your device and run commands – see Search.
Write to someone
TACENZA has no contact discovery: people find each other by username only.
- Choose New › New message, or type in the search field at the top of Chats.
- Enter the person’s username.
- Choose Write to @username and send your first message.
Everything you write is encrypted on your device before it leaves it. Read Messaging for replies, reactions, photos, voice messages and more.
If the other person has Message requests turned on, your first message waits in their requests folder until they accept it. You won’t know whether they’ve seen it until they reply.
Join or make a group
- Join with a link. Choose New › Join with a link and paste the invite link someone gave you. Some groups need an admin to approve you first.
- Find a public group. Open Discover, search, and join. The list is searched on your device.
- Make your own. Choose New › New group, give it a name and, optionally, add people by username.
When you join, you can read only what’s sent from then on. See Groups.
Check a safety number
A safety number lets you confirm that you’re really talking to the right person, with no one in between.
- Open the chat and choose the Details panel button in the header.
- Choose Safety number.
- Compare the 60 digits with the other person, in person or on a call you trust.
- If they match, choose Mark as verified.
If their keys ever change, TACENZA locks the chat with a warning until you compare again. See Privacy settings.
Install the app
- In the browser. TACENZA Chat is an installable web app. Installed, it opens like an app, shows unread messages on its icon and can get push notifications if you turn them on. On an iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
- Desktop app for Windows. The desktop app keeps its window out of screenshots and screen recordings, which a web page can’t do. Protected chats are readable only there by default. The Windows installer isn’t code-signed yet, so Windows may warn you when you run it.
Stay signed in
By default, nothing that could open your account is kept in the browser, so reloading the page logs you out. To stay signed in on a device that’s yours alone, tick Stay signed in on this device when you log in. A session lasts at most 12 hours.