Wire - Secure Messenger

Wire Swiss GmbH

About this app

Wire is secured with end-to-end encryption and makes life easier.
Get everything done in one app.

- Simple to use and beautifully designed
- A single tool to make small teams and complex organizations more productive
- Security and privacy at the core

Wire offers a free version for external business partners or friends and family.

Work securely, wherever you are

- Communicate and share information easily – call, chat, send pictures and files, audio and video messages – and be protected by the industry's most secure end-to-end encryption
- Stay in control of your data
- Increase privacy through self-deleting messages for sensitive information, device fingerprints, and guest links with passwords
- Eliminate risks with constant bitrate in calls

Stay connected and work productively

- Communicate with your teams through private or group conversations to bring the right people together
- Share and collaborate with files, documents, and links
- Enjoy high-quality calls and video conferences
Invite partners, customers, and suppliers to collaborate through the unique guest rooms – perfect for one-time conversations
- Set up meetings quickly
- Use formatting options to write clear and structured messages
- Collaborate smoothly with the help of mentions, replies, and reactions
- Send a ping to get someone's attention
- Use QR codes to connect with people
- Share your location in a conversation
- Add conversations to a custom folder helps you organize your conversations by topics
- Archive conversations to keep your list clean
- Rely on full administrative controls

Get things done and enjoy it

- Customize the app to your needs: choose your favorite color, theme, and suitable text size
- Draw a sketch in any conversation
- Send audio messages if you are on the go or too busy to type
- Use animated GIFs – text, select, share
- Use emojis to make your messages more fun
- History backup lets you take all the conversations, pictures, videos, and files when upgrading to a new phone
- Use Wire on up to 8 devices. Messages are separately end-to-end encrypted for each device. Your conversations are in sync across devices.
- Use up to 3 different Wire accounts on your device simultaneously — all without logging in and out

Wire is available on any device and operating system: iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, and web browsers.
So your team can collaborate in the office, at home, or on the road.

wire.com

Ratings and reviews

Wanted to like Wire, but it just feels like a worse version of Signal. The app is clunky, overcomplicated, and not nearly as intuitive. It tries to do too much instead of focusing on being a great secure messenger. Signal is faster, cleaner, and way more reliable. Everything just works, and it actually feels private. Honestly, there’s no real reason to choose Wire over Signal.

This is the best secure messaging app I could find, but not because it's so great, but because competitors suck even more. They either insist on using your phone number as identifier (Signal et al) or drain your battery (Antox). Problems with this app include extremely inconvenient key verification process and inconsistent notification time. I have not seen hour-long notification delays like other users, but a few minutes is not uncommon.

I've used this app since 2015. At first it was a great, but they keep releasing updates that break the app. Messages will randomly be wiped from chats (the trash icon doesn't even show), images more than a couple days old won't load, you have to completely close and restart the app a few times in order to read a message, and sending a message is no longer reliable. A simple text message takes quite a while after clicking resend a few times. Wish they would have just left it alone.

What’s new

New
- Network quality tool to get in-depth call quality information
- Option to turn off other participants’ videos in calls

Improvement
- Order of participants in calls

Fixes
- Calling issue in conversations using mixed protocols
- Issues with reactions and read receipts
- Failed messaging when adding a participant who has no MLS device
- MLS handling issues