How to Make a Secure Chat App Like Signal 

There are many development stages to make a really secure chat application. This field grows today, and it’s a great time to come into this market with a new messenger application. More detailed information about all the stages of messenger app development, their costs and aspects in this article: How to Make Really Secure Messaging App Similar to Signal?

You should start with understanding how do messengers work. Chat app developers work by two types of protocol:

1. HTTP + Push Notifications. This means the way of work where you’re notified when you get a message, and the server responds back to you when you open an app.
2. XMPP with socket-based chat. This protocol works by constant user connection to the server. And the user automatically moves to the offline mode when the connection is lost. Extensive Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is more common-used.

The next important question is How to make your messaging app secure?

The most popular way to make your chat app secure is end-to-end encryption. Let’s see how it works. The user sends a message, and it gets encoded on the user’s device. Then it’s transferred to the server, which brings it to the recipient. And only in recipient’s device, this message gets encoded. This means that only conversation members can see decoded messages.

Research the Market

The next step you should take is to conduct market & competitors research. This is needed to find the market leaders and understand the market situation. Once you found the market leaders, your competitors, you should explore their advantages, downsides, and unique features. As we speak about secure messaging apps, your competitors are:

• Signal
• Skype
• Telegram
• Viber
• WhatsApp    

Let’s investigate each all of them:

So, what’s the list of features an MVP secure messenger must have?

• Onboarding feature
• Maintenance/project setup feature
• Authorization feature
• Settings feature
• Profile
• Status/Invite/Privacy/Notifications/About feature
• Linked Devices
• Sockets/Real-time feature
• Signal Protocol Integration