A private chat app for the people who actually matter to you — your family, your close friends, your group.
No ads. No algorithms deciding what you see. No company reading your messages to sell you things. BLML runs on a server you control, and your conversations, photos and voice notes stay there.
iPhone and iPad, Android, and any web browser. All three talk to the same server, so a conversation looks the same wherever you pick it up, and history follows you between devices.
- iPhone and iPad: BLML on the App Store.
- Android: download the app directly from chat.blml.app/android — it comes from your own server, like everything else here.
- Browser: just open chat.blml.app, no install needed.
Every download is also gathered on blml.app, which reads in Vietnamese or English.
Anyone can create an account on chat.blml.app. If you run your own server you can keep it invite-only with a registration code, so an address anyone can reach need not be a room anyone can walk into.
On iPhone
On Android
Message one person or a whole group. You get the things you expect from a modern messenger: you can see when someone is typing, when your message was delivered, and when it was read. Reply to a specific message to keep a busy group conversation straight, edit a message you got wrong, or send a voice note when typing is too slow.
Share photos, videos, documents and audio — up to 100 MB per file, which is generous enough for a real video rather than a compressed smear of one.
There is a sticker and emoji panel next to the text box, opening on a page of the ones people actually use: 👍 ❤️ 🎉 🎂 🙏 😂 and friends.
Voice and video calls go directly between devices where the network allows it, and fall back to relaying through your server when it doesn't — so calls connect even when both people are on mobile data behind restrictive networks.
@mentions pull someone into a conversation they'd otherwise scroll past.
Pinned messages keep the address, the date, or the thing everyone keeps asking about at the top where nobody has to search for it.
Polls let you settle "what are we eating" in one tap each, instead of forty messages.
Broadcast channels are for announcements: admins post, everyone reads, and nobody can derail it.
Link previews show you what a link actually is before you tap it — and the title is fetched by your own server, so opening a chat doesn't quietly tell a dozen websites that you're online.
Every member has a personal QR code — scan one with the camera, or pick a photo of one that was sent to you, and the chat opens. Add people by phone number or email, search by username, or let the app match your phone's contacts against members who've added their number. Nothing is uploaded anywhere except your own server.
The app even suggests people you may know: members of your group chats you haven't talked to one-on-one yet — the kind of suggestion that makes sense in a family, computed on your phone rather than by an algorithm watching you.
Light, dark, or follow-your-phone themes. A gallery of chat wallpapers served from your own server, with matching light and dark versions so the app looks right whichever theme you're in. Adjustable text size, because not everyone in a family group has the same eyesight.
Every account gets a private space to send things to yourself — links, notes, photos you want to find again later.
Most chat apps are free because you are the product. BLML is the other trade: someone runs a small server, and in return the group's messages belong to the group.
That has real consequences worth being upfront about. There's no company guaranteeing uptime — if the server goes down, chat stops until someone restarts it. And whoever runs the server decides who gets in: open sign-up, or a code you hand out yourself.
For a family spread across countries, or a group that just wants somewhere quiet to talk, that's usually the right trade.
The whole thing is open source and designed to run on one cheap server. A small VPS is plenty — the software idles at around 110 MB of memory, so roughly $10/month handles a hundred people comfortably.
Setting it up is three commands on a fresh Ubuntu machine, covered step by step in deploy/DEPLOY.md. It brings up the server, gets an HTTPS certificate automatically, sets up the call relay, and turns on nightly backups.
Other documentation:
- SETUP.md — configuration, phone and email verification, push notifications
- BUILDING.md — building the iOS, Android and web clients yourself
BLML is open source. The server is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.0; the
iOS, Android and web clients under the Apache License 2.0. The license texts
are in server/LICENSE, ios/LICENSE, android/LICENSE and webapp/LICENSE,
and UPSTREAM.md records where the code comes from.