Iris Nearby
A cross-platform Android app for messaging without internet. Uses Bluetooth and WiFi Direct for peer-to-peer communication within 100 meters. Supports text, voice notes, and images with end-to-end encryption.
IRIS Nearby lets you send messages, voice notes, and images to people near you — without needing the internet. Using Bluetooth and WiFi Direct, your phone talks directly to other phones nearby. No cell towers. No WiFi routers. No data plans.
Why this exists
When a natural disaster hits, cell towers go down. When 50,000 people show up at a festival, the network jams. When you're hiking in the wilderness, there's no signal. In all these situations, people still need to communicate — and existing messaging apps are useless without internet.
IRIS Nearby solves this by using the radios already in your phone — Bluetooth and WiFi Direct — to establish direct peer-to-peer connections. No infrastructure required. No server. No internet.
How it works
The app uses Google's Nearby Connections API for device discovery and connection management. When you open IRIS, it starts advertising your device and simultaneously scanning for others. When two IRIS users come within range (up to 100 meters in open space), they automatically discover each other.
Once connected, messages are sent directly between devices — text as lightweight packets, voice notes and images as encoded binary data. The protocol handles delivery and read receipts, so you know when your message arrived and when it was seen.
Privacy and encryption
Every message is encrypted using AES-256 before transmission. Encryption keys are managed through Flutter Secure Storage, and message data is stored in encrypted boxes on-device. Your messages never leave the local connection — there's no server to intercept them, no cloud to breach.
Technical decisions
Why Nearby Connections over raw Bluetooth? Raw Bluetooth requires manual pairing and has a 30-meter range limit. Nearby Connections abstracts over both Bluetooth and WiFi Direct, choosing the best transport automatically and extending range to 100+ meters.
Why Hive over SQLite? Hive is a lightweight key-value store written in pure Dart with built-in encryption support. For a messaging app where the data model is simple, Hive's speed and encryption-first design made more sense than SQLite's relational overhead.
State management
The app uses Provider for state management with four core services: NearbyService (connection management), StorageService (message persistence), AudioService (voice note recording/playback), and NotificationService (system alerts). Each service is independent and testable.
IRIS Nearby is currently in closed testing on Google Play. If you're interested in being an early tester, you can sign up through the form linked below.
Join the Closed Testing
IRIS Nearby is currently in closed testing on Google Play. Be an early tester and help shape the app before its public launch. The APK is also available for direct download from the website.