Hi, I'm Alex.
I've been a software engineer for eight years, and I care deeply about privacy and anonymity. I believe that talking privately with your family and the people you love is a human right, and one that's too often taken for granted.
Zuno is a one-person project: I design and build the app and this website, and I run zuno.chat, where you can make an account.
Where it started
I've always been wary of big tech. Not only of what large companies do with what they collect, but of what happens when it leaks, and of backdoors that give secret access to places a company says it can't reach.
Those worries are why I first started hosting our chats myself, just for my family and friends. Doing it myself meant I no longer had to take anyone's word for who could read the messages my family and I sent.
Why Zuno
Talking with people over the years, I realized that more of them, and whole communities, take their privacy seriously every day but don't know where to turn. Hosting their own chat is rarely an option, so they stay with large companies whose business comes first.
Hosting it myself also meant trying every app that could connect to it, and none of them stuck. Each was missing something that matters: notifications that arrive, calls that connect, and in some cases calls with more than two people at all. The one I used longest was no longer being actively improved.
A good chat app should be fast and reliable, and just as easy to use and understand for people who aren't technical.
Zuno grew out of both: the chats I hosted for my own family, and the app I couldn't find. It's for anyone, whether they host Matrix for their own people or never want to.
What I hold myself to
I'd rather Zuno be designed so that I can't read your messages than ask you to trust that I won't. On zuno.chat, which I run, I can see that one username talks to another, and when, but never what's said. An account there takes an email address but never a phone number, and the people you talk to never see the email, so your username doesn't have to say who you are.
As surveillance keeps growing, and transparency laws are passed without people having a say in the matter, I'd rather support smaller, more ethical projects than wait for big tech to change. Zuno is my way of building one.
Four ideas behind Zuno
- A safe place for your people
- Friends and family talk without being watched.
- Privacy without effort
- Strong protection that feels like any other chat app.
- Free and open source
- Zuno costs nothing, and anyone can read its code. I pay the running costs myself, and donations help cover them. They unlock nothing.
- An app, not a service
- Zuno works with Matrix accounts on other addresses too. zuno.chat is one place to make one, not the only one.
Timeline
What's done so far.
August 2026
Work begins
The first version of Zuno, with end-to-end encryption on by default.
September 2026
zuno.chat opens
A place to make an account, which exchanges messages with no other address.
October 2026
Android launch
Zuno arrives on Google Play.
November 2026
iPhone launch
Zuno arrives on the App Store.
Get in touch
Questions or feedback? Write to me at hello@zuno.aleeas.com.