circles-ios VS ios-app

Well, since you asked... :-)

I've been working on something in this space for a little while. It's called Circles. Originally, I just wanted a safer and easier way to share baby photos with my extended family. Safer than posting pictures of my kid publicly on Facebook. Easier / more convenient than pinging the crap out of everyone's phone on Signal.

It's kind of like a bare-bones version of Facebook. Only you can have multiple social circles (like in G+), each with your own "wall" for posting stuff and timeline of posts from the friends that you're following there.

All posts are E2E encrypted, using the same crypto as in Element/Matrix, and the back end is just a standard Matrix server. The E2EE prevents the server from seeing what you post, or from injecting crap into your timeline. You can use your own Matrix server, or you can sign up to create an account on mine.

It's open source: https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

You're welcome to try out the beta if you want: https://testflight.apple.com/join/cwsJZed9

If all goes well, it should go live in the App Store later this month.

Unfortunately it's iOS only for now. I'm working as fast as I can to get started on an Android version.

If you try it out, please let me know what you think! Thanks!!!

Wow, well said. We are trying to build something like this with Circles. https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

It’s E2E encrypted, so the server can’t datamine your posts or meddle with your timeline. Built on Matrix underneath, so building federated communities will be straightforward.

Let me know if you’d like to try it out.

I’ve been learning SwiftUI and building an encrypted social network app. It’s called Circles, and it’s almost ready to go.

https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

Next I need to make the Android version. I’m hearing a lot of good things about Flutter.

This is awesome. Not because I like Twitter. It’s pretty awful.

And I don’t hold out much hope that this will do anything to stop Twitter from boosting crazy garbage in order to maximize “engagement” and sell ads.

I’m excited because I think this will make it easier for competitors to come along and offer a better, more user-focused experience. You can do a lot with $3/user.

Full disclosure: I’m building a privacy focused social network that will be a paid subscription service. https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

More info: https://github.com/ivpn/ios-app/issues/131

Thanks for the feedback! GitHub issues opened: https://github.com/ivpn/ios-app/issues/349 https://github.com/ivpn/android-app/issues/240

OK I understand the issue now. Yes, I think we can improve the background key rotation to work in this case as well. I already opened a ticket and assigned it to the v2.10.0 release - https://github.com/ivpn/ios-app/issues/348.

The issue is likely caused by a Network Extension bug in iOS 16. We have submitted a report to Apple and will investigate further before release of our next iOS version. Details and steps to reproduce: https://github.com/ivpn/ios-app/issues/283

Regarding other updates, you can check out the change log: https://github.com/ivpn/ios-app/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md

I was mistaken about the lack of workaround though. There is an option for iOS users to get connected - they can download the WireGuard app for example and set up a manual connection as described on the bottom of this page: https://www.ivpn.net/apps-ios/ This is a hoop non-technical folks might not be able to jump through. This is the best we can do now.