The promises of Elon Musk about a dramatic change in the way users of X (formerly Twitter) communicate with each other are finally taking tangible form in the app store. A new application called XChat has appeared in Apple’s App Store, available for pre-order and expected to become officially available for download on April 17. Despite the nostalgic name that may evoke memories among veteran users from the IRC era of the early 2000s, this time it is a completely different product – a dedicated messaging tool directly linked to users’ X accounts.
The roots of XChat go back to mid-2025, when Musk announced his intention to launch a new version of the platform’s direct messaging (DM) service. At that time, he promised a completely new architecture based on encryption, and even claimed that the service would reach all users as early as June last year. As has often happened with Musk’s timelines, the reality on the ground took a little longer than the optimistic forecasts, and the result is not just an internal upgrade, but a separate and independent application.
The new application allows X users to manage chat conversations and conduct voice and video calls across different devices. The main emphasis here is on privacy and control: XChat is based on end-to-end encryption, and it allows users to edit or delete sent messages for all participants in the conversation. In addition, the application includes advanced tools to prevent information leakage, such as the option to block screenshots within the conversation and the setting of disappearing messages that will be automatically deleted within five minutes of being sent.
On the social side, XChat aims to enable interaction on a large scale, with support for massive groups that can include up to 481 members simultaneously. Despite X’s reputation as an advertising-based platform, the App Store listing promises that the new application will be free of ads and will not track users. At this stage, iPhone and iPad users can already perform a “Pre-order” so that the application will be automatically installed on their device at the moment of the official launch in a few days.



















