Private voice for people nearby.
Talk quietly with the people around you, through your AirPods. Your voice goes from your phone to theirs.
Both of you with noise cancelling on. Nothing to take out.
Not on the App Store yet. TestFlight is Apple's app for pre-release builds — install it and new versions arrive on their own.
Why
For the moments when talking normally doesn't work.
- On a noisy street — Hear each other, even when the city gets loud. Side by side, and still repeating yourself.
- On the train — Talk without making the whole carriage hear you. One sentence costs you an earbud — and you wait for them to take one out too.
- On the trail — You shouldn't have to shout to someone you're hiking with. A few steps apart, no turning around.
- In quiet places — Stay quiet. Still talk normally. A museum, a library, a late night.
Every one of them ends the same way: you take a headphone out, or you give up. Naisho removes that move.
How it works
Nearby feels different.
Open it and there they are — who is nearby now, and who you talked to last.
One tap from you, one from them. It takes both.
Then just talk. Earbuds stay in, and you can both speak at once.
Who can see you, who can hear you
A private field.
People nearby with Naisho open can see your name and your emoji — that is how you find each other. Nobody gets into a conversation with you unless you both tap. You always know who's listening: it's the person you tapped.
What it does
Six things, all of them true
The two phones connect to each other
Your voice does not pass through a server — we don't have one. Whichever link is working: no cellular, no router, no data used at all. It works in a tunnel.
The links are Wi‑Fi Aware, peer-to-peer Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth.
No account, and nothing is kept
Nothing to sign up for, no email, no phone number. What you say is never recorded, never transcribed, never stored — when you stop, it is gone.
The only thing that ever leaves your phone is a diagnostic report, and only if you send one or leave automatic crash reports on.
You can both talk at once
Full duplex — there is no button to hold down. Music drops to the background while someone is speaking and comes back up after; podcasts pause and resume.
Voice boost evens out your friend’s volume, and you can turn them up or down without touching your music. The microphone is live only during a conversation, and is released the moment it ends.
You can see who is nearby
Open it and you see which friends are around right now. When both iPhones have Ultra Wideband, a friend’s place in the field reflects how far away they are — nearer means closer. Distance, not direction: Naisho doesn’t point.
If their Naisho is closed, you can wake it.
Your friend list stays on your phone
Who your friends are and when you last talked lives on that phone only and is never uploaded. On a new phone, you become friends again.
Connecting takes one tap from each of you
The first time, one of you taps the other and the other taps Confirm and join. Nothing connects until both have.
That is where a friendship starts, and you can remove every one of them at any time in Settings.
To be precise
Encryption, as two separate things
Voice
Every voice link between the two phones is encrypted. Apple's Multipeer link is encrypted by requirement, and each of the three links we build ourselves carries its own session key.
Wake
This one is not encrypted. Waking a friend is a signed Bluetooth broadcast: the signature proves it really came from a friend of yours, but the contents are in the clear, and they carry the sender's nickname and avatar emoji. Anything listening nearby can read them.
We write them as two things because they are two things. The full account is in the privacy policy.
Say something
Something's broken, or you just want to say whether it's any good
Something's missing, something's wrong, or you simply have a thought — write to me. One person makes this, and I read the mail myself.
hello@naisho.spaceTalk quietly. Stay close.