# The Future of MeshChatX _General · started by Ivan on Tue, Sep 1, 2026 10:31 PM_ --- ## Original post **Ivan** · Tue, Sep 1, 2026 10:31 PM Hello all just want to give update on development of MeshChatX and things to come. In 4.8.6 nomadnet browser will render pages in a sandboxed iframe tabs and Windows will use AppContainer by default (Native OS Sandboxing). You can view sandboxing status in about page. Linux already uses landlock and seccomp-bpf when it can. Micron-Parser-Go (Micron WASM renderer in MeshChatX) will have better Arabic/Persian support in v1.0.7 or v4.8.6 of MeshChatX. I have been working on various map improvements, GPX support, and ability to share maps efficiently publicly or privately. I am still finalizing and testing my ideas so dont have much to say on this right now. RRC hub for MeshChatX project is coming sometime this week. I am also deploying a LXMFy bot where you can report issues, make suggestions or submit patches so I can better track them and you dont need to use GitHub or message me directly if you dont want to. I am improving meshchatx documentation and adding it to the website. If you submit ideas make sure to consult the Reticulum zen first. Finally there will be extended time between releases so I can properly test across various platforms and different scenarios. --- ## Reply 1 **Zenith** · Tue, Sep 1, 2026 11:05 PM **Ivan** wrote: > I have been working on various map improvements, GPX support, and ability to share maps efficiently publicly or privately. I am still finalizing and testing my ideas so dont have much to say on this right now. Could we get WGS84 and UTM coordinates in the map in addition to just longitudinal coordinates? I and several other people use a fork of MCX that I wrote which has this, and can ship it off as a .patch if you want. Longitudinal coordinates are basically useless for 90% of purposes. The conversion of longitudinal coordinates to UTM even with a computer is *extremely* difficult to do offline. I would also suggest making UTM the default instead of longitudinal coordinates, or maybe have the grid system selectable as a dropdown of some sort. Let me know via LXMF if you are interested and want to collaborate on development Not trying to criticize the map feature btw, it's awesome! But not very useful for offline cases. --- ## Reply 2 **Zenith** · Tue, Sep 1, 2026 11:10 PM Also Open Location Codes https://github.com/google/open-location-code would be awesome too. It's one of the (few) good things Google has done and it works entirely offline and is open source and less error prone than something like what3words https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/python/openlocationcode/openlocationcode.py --- ## Reply 3 **Boltic** · Tue, Sep 1, 2026 11:27 PM What do you think about simplifying the user interface? I suggested your program to many people and I saw that the person was confused for the first time and completely abandoned Reticulum and said, "What's your problem? Why don't you use Telegram?" Then I thought to myself, "Why didn't I suggest Columba so that he would be less confused?" And on the other hand, I was like, "Meshchatx is full of features, but that program doesn't have any special features?" What do you think? It should look better, or have an advanced option and a simple option, and if you want, you can throw out its features. Of course, I noticed that you tried to do that in the last few months, but a little more. And regarding its initial setup, I think you should make it so that even a person who is completely unaware of this network can proceed. And for example, no special settings are required, several initial nodes are automatically selected and then the rest of the nodes are discovered, and several automatic connections are enabled by default, so that even if the user doesn't know, the network still works automatically. thank you for your work. --- ## Reply 4 **Eric-the-Read** · Tue, Sep 1, 2026 11:38 PM **Ivan** wrote: > Finally there will be extended time between releases so I can properly test across various platforms and different scenarios. YES - PLEASE - THANK-YOU so very much --- ## Reply 5 **Ivan** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 12:31 PM **Zenith** wrote: > Could we get WGS84 and UTM coordinates in the map in addition to just longitudinal coordinates? I and several other people use a fork of MCX that I wrote which has this, and can ship it off as a .patch if you want. Yes that would be great! Improving the map, especially for offline usage has been on my mind for a while. **Boltic** wrote: > What do you think about simplifying the user interface? I suggested your program to many people and I saw that the person was confused for the first time and completely abandoned Reticulum and said, "What's your problem? Why don't you use Telegram?" Yes I have been working on making UI/UX better and experimenting with various methods to help new users. --- ## Reply 6 **Mark** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 12:38 PM Thanks for all the work on MeshChatX Ivan! It's a fantastic client with so much functionality built in. I especially appreciate the sustained attention to details, security hardening, version pinning and attestation, that you have put a lot of effort into. Not many applications, even outside Reticulum, take it so seriously, and that is incredibly nice to see. While I agree it's nice to have "simple UX" for new users sometimes, I hope you won't scrape away the advanced functionality and plethora of options for us users who know what we're doing and want it there ;) I have family members in their 70s who really enjoy using MCX as it is, and find it perfectly intuitive, so take the need for simplicity with a grain of salt. --- ## Reply 7 **joakim** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 1:10 PM Progressive disclosure is a good principle to follow. It makes it less overwhelming for beginners while keeping advanced functionality easy to reach for advanced users. --- ## Reply 8 **Torlando** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 3:02 PM **Ivan** wrote: > I have been working on various map improvements, GPX support, and ability to share maps efficiently publicly or privately. I am still finalizing and testing my ideas so dont have much to say on this right now. > Definitely curious to see your thoughts on map sharing. I had something half-baked for this about 6-9 months ago that I never did finish. The goal was to provide a way to download any arbitrary map region over reticulum, instead of relying on http. The rough shape I was going towards was that map providers (users who want to share/host maps) could announce their coverage areas (potentially by geohash(es)), and map requesters (users who want to download a given map) could then request a subset (or all) of said coverage from a known destination (discovered via the aforementioned announces). I ran into some indecision around handling, for lack of a better term, map authentication - how does a requester know that a given map tile is not maliciously modified? You could include hashes of the tiles, maybe have the provider sign them, maybe compare hashes for the same tile from multiple providers, but this all circles around *trusting* a map provider, and I didn't like that for reticulum. Private sharing, as you mentioned, gets around this at the design level, assuming you implicitly trust the person privately providing you a map. The other sticking point I ran into was formatting - vector vs. raster. At first I thought to just only use vector since it's smaller on the wire, and then discovered that the ESP32-S3 doesn't have enough power to render vector maps (and I wanted this design to work on the t-deck). This is a topic that is new to me so hopefully there is some obvious solution that I'm just ignorant to. Anyway, just figured I'd share my thoughts here :) happy to brainstorm here or elsewhere if you'd like. --- ## Reply 9 **Ivan** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 8:21 PM **Mark** wrote: > While I agree it's nice to have "simple UX" for new users sometimes, I hope you won't scrape away the advanced functionality and plethora of options for us users who know what we're doing and want it there ;) I have family members in their 70s who really enjoy using MCX as it is, and find it perfectly intuitive, so take the need for simplicity with a grain of salt. Yes I definitely do not want to do that. I will try to find a sweet spot. --- ## Reply 10 **pertinax** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 9:27 PM At some point it became impossible for me to copy and paste from meshchatx on android. I do the usual procedure of holding down my finger on some words. The usual thing happens of the words getting highlighted with the little teardrops at either end to expand or shrink the selection. Instead of the usual context sensitive menu popping up with a copy option, a non context sensitive menu pops up with irrelevant options like "toggle source", " download page" and " add/remove from favourites". They're all options relevant to the page, not the highlighted text. It has been frustrating to be without basic android copy paste functionality for so long. Awesome app otherwise. --- ## Reply 11 **Ivan** · Wed, Sep 2, 2026 9:49 PM **pertinax** wrote: > At some point it became impossible for me to copy and paste from meshchatx on android. I do the usual procedure of holding down my finger on some words. The usual thing happens of the words getting highlighted with the little teardrops at either end to expand or shrink the selection. Instead of the usual context sensitive menu popping up with a copy option, a non context sensitive menu pops up with irrelevant options like "toggle source", " download page" and " add/remove from favourites". They're all options relevant to the page, not the highlighted text. > > It has been frustrating to be without basic android copy paste functionality for so long. > > Awesome app otherwise. I will fix this before next release. --- ## Reply 12 **Boltic** · Thu, Sep 3, 2026 12:06 AM Suggestions for the future: Add IP tunnel. Add group. Add video call. Add group voice call. Add last seen in messaging. Add option to download voices. Playing media files such as videos and music in the app is also possible. Ability to export and restore and merge discovered nodes easily (probably more related to Reticulum) Maybe a bit of a dream(: Adding Bluetooth, and in case of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct they can be discovered and connected automatically, if possible the advantage is that a mesh network is created without adding anything. Maybe not bad?! Ability to update rns... without updating meshchatx, similar to what happens in the Python version. Ability to limit background traffic to receive Announces in kilobytes (not just on a server but on the entire network), maybe related to Reticulum now. It wouldn't be bad to create some kind of plugin store or something like that so that all sorts of weird ideas can be installed?(: When I switch to another account, all my Announces etc. change, is this extra work necessary? Is it good for privacy or what? If it doesn't matter, why not merge? Add The option to connect to which nodes? All? Only i2p, in short, to determine whether to connect to all nodes or only the selected model. And thank you again and your program is great, maybe some of it is good, in general I wrote it, maybe it is worth adding. --- ## Reply 13 **Rudi Mentaire** · Thu, Sep 3, 2026 12:46 AM I don't have a problem with the interface of MeshChatX at all. I'm a newcomer, not 75 years old, and I don't find it complicated. I hate it if a program or app (or OS...) tries to hide complexity that the user can't avoid anyway. And: how can I estimate "is this something for me?" if I can't see what working with a program will finally look like? Given what you can all do with mcx, and that there are alternatives so not everybody is forced to use exactly this program, the interface is already just...quite good? What I sometimes do miss: open link in new tab, remember this exact address (aka bookmark) in nomadnet. But we are not being polite, this is no wishlist... --- ## Reply 14 **Loelin** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 8:55 AM Inspired by another topic, I think importing a graphics terminal protocol (like Kitty graphics protocol) Could help alleviate bandwidth load. --- ## Reply 15 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 9:12 AM Please make a tutorial for newcomers, i understand that everybody should rtfm but that just ends up alienating people away from the project --- ## Reply 16 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 9:13 AM **Boltic** wrote: > Suggestions for the future: > Add IP tunnel. > Add group. > Add video call. > Add group voice call. > Add last seen in messaging. > Add option to download voices. > Playing media files such as videos and music in the app is also possible. > Ability to export and restore and merge discovered nodes easily (probably more related to Reticulum) > > Maybe a bit of a dream(: Adding Bluetooth, and in case of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct they can be discovered and connected automatically, if possible the advantage is that a mesh network is created without adding anything. > > Maybe not bad?! Ability to update rns... without updating meshchatx, similar to what happens in the Python version. > > Ability to limit background traffic to receive Announces in kilobytes (not just on a server but on the entire network), maybe related to Reticulum now. > > It wouldn't be bad to create some kind of plugin store or something like that so that all sorts of weird ideas can be installed?(: > > When I switch to another account, all my Announces etc. change, is this extra work necessary? Is it good for privacy or what? If it doesn't matter, why not merge? > > Add The option to connect to which nodes? All? Only i2p, in short, to determine whether to connect to all nodes or only the selected model. > > And thank you again and your program is great, maybe some of it is good, in general I wrote it, maybe it is worth adding. IP? why? packing (tcp+/udp+)ip into rns seems resource wasteful. --- ## Reply 17 **Boltic** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 2:30 PM **burger** wrote: > > IP? why? packing (tcp+/udp+)ip into rns seems resource wasteful. To run a program or game that is not available for this network, it is also useful for limited internets that cannot be servers, for example I cannot set up a game server or a mumble server with my internet. But I can with the reticulum ip tunnel, it can also be useful for socks proxies. Of course, yes, it is not very useful for the network, and by the way, its operation can be more difficult. Anyway, I felt that the possibility would be a good thing. --- ## Reply 18 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 2:55 PM **Boltic** wrote: > **burger** wrote: > > > > IP? why? packing (tcp+/udp+)ip into rns seems resource wasteful. > > To run a program or game that is not available for this network, it is also useful for limited internets that cannot be servers, for example I cannot set up a game server or a mumble server with my internet. But I can with the reticulum ip tunnel, it can also be useful for socks proxies. > Of course, yes, it is not very useful for the network, and by the way, its operation can be more difficult. > Anyway, I felt that the possibility would be a good thing. mumble is opensource, you could try to make it work with rns, i mean, i2p folks did it, plus we have lxst gaming over reticulum is very painful it just seems weird to me why would you use ip to pack rns into ip, & repack ip into rns i highly advise against using reticulum for censorship(censorship is bad, dont get me wrong) bypassing because the evil Roskomnadzor will block reticulum --- ## Reply 19 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 2:56 PM i mean, sure, go do it on your own network, but please dont host socks5 on the distributed backbone... --- ## Reply 20 **Boltic** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:08 PM I understand, anyway, a big reason for me to use this network was to have an alternative to our limited internet that would bypass the limitation. And why not about games? Someone brought a game to this network and sometimes it's even playable, maybe with a little optimization it would be completely playable. I don't know, but I was really excited for something to come out that could work both without traditional internet and with traditional internet, and to distance ourselves from traditional internet little by little... Because all our communication is dependent on a company or government, it's a lot of trouble.. --- ## Reply 21 **Boltic** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:16 PM **burger** wrote: > > mumble is opensource, you could try to make it work with rns, i mean, i2p folks did it, plus we have lxst It feels like something beyond i2p (: And mumble was an example, although there is no software like it on this network yet, but yes, if there is software with lxst support, it would be better than that. Anyway, many things are not there right now, and it would be nice to be able to do this, now, for example, in the long run, if it becomes very widespread, yes! You can bring almost everything to this network, but right now, it's not like that... --- ## Reply 22 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:20 PM **Boltic** wrote: > I understand, anyway, a big reason for me to use this network was to have an alternative to our limited internet that would bypass the limitation. > And why not about games? Someone brought a game to this network and sometimes it's even playable, maybe with a little optimization it would be completely playable. on the testnet as i call it the speeds are quite low, and if you want a good experience, the link should have no more than 1 hop anyways, if you want to try something, try it out, have some fun ^_^ burger --- ## Reply 23 **Zenith** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:20 PM **Boltic** wrote: > And mumble was an example, although there is no software like it on this network yet, but yes, if there is software with lxst support, it would be better than that. Anyway, many things are not there right now, and it would be nice to be able to do this, now, for example, in the long run, if it becomes very widespread, yes! You can bring almost everything to this network, but right now, it's not like that... I am in the process of developing a group voice application built on LXST designed to work across both fast and slow mediums. It is not ready for production use yet, but you can give it a try here. The protocol is subject to change. https://github.com/RFnexus/partyline rngit: `rns://4cf8a0651c4d73cacd0f93ac1d95e80a/public/partyline` ![image.png](/storage/forum/y3hs2YrIeIJWINoRfdDBjmFBphDkDqljYLYS4mIH.png) Ever wondered what voice-over-DNS looks like? Here's Partyline running with RNS setup on an Iodine DNS tunnel: ![image.png](/storage/forum/Mif0SlfGFYFl2BeJtUR9aCxoGEQXYQwdA1ZS8goV.png) --- ## Reply 24 **burger** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:23 PM **Zenith** wrote: > **Boltic** wrote: > > And mumble was an example, although there is no software like it on this network yet, but yes, if there is software with lxst support, it would be better than that. Anyway, many things are not there right now, and it would be nice to be able to do this, now, for example, in the long run, if it becomes very widespread, yes! You can bring almost everything to this network, but right now, it's not like that... > > I am in the process of developing a group voice application built on LXST designed to work across both fast and slow mediums. It is not ready for production use yet, but you can give it a try here. The protocol is subject to change. > https://github.com/RFnexus/partyline > rngit: `rns://4cf8a0651c4d73cacd0f93ac1d95e80a/public/partyline` > [image] > > > Ever wondered what voice-over-DNS looks like? Here's Partyline running with RNS setup on an Iodine DNS tunnel: > [image] > yoooo, nice!!! looks like mumble too! --- ## Reply 25 **Boltic** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:28 PM **Zenith** wrote: > **Boltic** wrote: > > And mumble was an example, although there is no software like it on this network yet, but yes, if there is software with lxst support, it would be better than that. Anyway, many things are not there right now, and it would be nice to be able to do this, now, for example, in the long run, if it becomes very widespread, yes! You can bring almost everything to this network, but right now, it's not like that... > > I am in the process of developing a group voice application built on LXST designed to work across both fast and slow mediums. It is not ready for production use yet, but you can give it a try here. The protocol is subject to change. > https://github.com/RFnexus/partyline > rngit: `rns://4cf8a0651c4d73cacd0f93ac1d95e80a/public/partyline` > [image] > > > Ever wondered what voice-over-DNS looks like? Here's Partyline running with RNS setup on an Iodine DNS tunnel: > [image] > I have nothing to say, except that your writing was enjoyable from start to finish (: --- ## Reply 26 **Boltic** · Mon, Sep 7, 2026 3:43 PM I ran it, I really liked it, but yeah, the feature has a lot of room for improvement. I'm waiting for different versions for different operating systems. I'd appreciate it if you could make it work for people who only use Steam, Discord, or Teamspeak. I'd love to be able to recommend it to others and have one place for group voice calls forever instead of a bunch of different software. I love you. ((: --- ## Reply 27 **Ivan** · Tue, Sep 8, 2026 10:15 AM **Zenith** wrote: > I am in the process of developing a group voice application built on LXST designed to work across both fast and slow mediums. It is not ready for production use yet, but you can give it a try here. The protocol is subject to change. > https://github.com/RFnexus/partyline > rngit: `rns://4cf8a0651c4d73cacd0f93ac1d95e80a/public/partyline` That is awesome! --- ## Reply 28 **Ivan** · Tue, Sep 8, 2026 12:53 PM v4.8.6 is out with various fixes, updates and **early** map work for WGS84, plus codes, MGRS and more that Zenith mentioned. I implemented plus codes and MGRS in Go then compile to WASM so its 10x easier across platforms and faster. Most of the changes to map will come in v4.9.0 I have also updated the website and downloads from there will default to BunnyCDN when available, but you can select GitHub as well for download server. You can also select the version. Flatpak remote is also on the CDN as well: ` flatpak install --from https://cdn.quad4.io/flatpak/meshchatx-stable.flatpakref ` You can also do: ` flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists meshchatx https://cdn.quad4.io/flatpak/meshchatx.flatpakrepo flatpak install meshchatx com.meshchatx.app//stable ` You can change stable to `beta` or `testing` as well No I will not be adding to Flathub, that is a centralized remote. Its really not hard to run the above commands. As for arch users there is https://arch.quad4.io/ which also uses CDN and Github as fallback. For rngit releases I will just upload the python wheel that I build locally, but let me know if you want other assets on there. I would like to keep assets on there locally built going forward. --- ## Reply 29 **Ivan** · Wed, Sep 9, 2026 11:03 PM There is a bug in inbound policy of LXMF messages so larger messages and attachments will fail. I am working on v4.9.0 with additional features, fixes and hardening expecting to push that out Friday. In the meantime there will be testing/beta builds for v4.8.9 in releases shortly. v4.8.9 python wheel is already on PyPI/rngit and docker you can pull latest image. 132f67e79d9b24aad014e93015fb858f:/page/release.mu`g=public|r=MeshChatX|t=v4.8.9 GitHub issues are now synced to work documents on rngit as well. v4.9.0 will have opt-in image support for nomadnet browser, new translation system and other improvements, fixes, improved testing. --- ## Reply 30 **J39** · Fri, Sep 11, 2026 10:13 PM Hey Ivan, I'm having an issue with 4.8.6 on Windows 11 on first run. Seems like there's a missing file that's triggering an integrity panic. I tried installing as admin with no change, same for trying to create the empty file manually before first run. [electron] INTEGRITY WARNING: Backend tampering detected! Issues: Backend build timestamp: 2026-09-07 22:41:45, Modified: lib\meshchatx\src\backend\data\map\.gitkeep --- ## Reply 31 **Ivan** · Fri, Sep 11, 2026 10:50 PM Sorry about that, it will be fixed in v4.9.0 which will most likely be released tomorrow because I had bad headache today. In the meantime there will be a testing build out in 2-3 hours. I have also expanded testing to catch this type of issue next time. --- ## Reply 32 **J39** · Sat, Sep 12, 2026 5:14 PM **Ivan** wrote: > Sorry about that, it will be fixed in v4.9.0 which will most likely be released tomorrow because I had bad headache today. In the meantime there will be a testing build out in 2-3 hours. I have also expanded testing to catch this type of issue next time. No worries at all, just wanted to make sure you were aware. --- ## Reply 33 **Rudi Mentaire** · Tue, Sep 15, 2026 1:33 PM I had written: > What I sometimes do miss: open link in new tab [...] Well, I have discovered: for meshchatx in a browser (I am using firefox) the middle mouse key or Ctrl-Leftmouse just does that! Probably depends on your browser and OS, but the feature definitely already exists :-) --- ## Reply 34 **379-RadioStation** · Sat, Sep 19, 2026 2:55 PM @Ivan, not rushing of-course but with the pause in Github/rngit activity I'm hoping that headache didn't turn into sickness! Hope all is well. --- ## Reply 35 **Ivan** · Sat, Sep 19, 2026 11:33 PM I did a soft release for v4.9.0 due to sandbox breaking windows, working on doing a v4.9.1 release soon with a bunch of more fixes, improvements and features. By soon likely within next 24 hours provided my testing goes well. ---