Agree on a passcode
Pick a short phrase together in person. Starling uses it to find the same local room - no usernames or sign-ups.
No servers · No internet · No accounts
Starling
A messaging app that lives entirely on your local network. Devices on the same Wi-Fi or LAN find each other directly and chat over an encrypted peer-to-peer link. The public internet is never involved.
Stays on your network. Always.
Built for conversations that should never leave the building.
Starling has no central server, no relay, no cloud account. Every message, file, and join request travels directly between devices on the same local network. Pull the internet plug and Starling keeps working - that is the point.
How it works
A simple room ritual.
Join on the LAN
Open Starling on the same Wi-Fi or wired network. Discovery is a UDP broadcast on your subnet only.
Approve newcomers
If a room is already active, someone inside clicks Allow before the new device can chat. No host required.
Chat peer to peer
Messages, files, and images flow directly device to device over encrypted TCP. Nothing routes through a server.
A tour of the app
Familiar chat, with no cloud strings attached.
Pin rooms, rename them, share files and images, drop in emoji - the everyday chat experience, just running on your own network.
Privacy and security
Local by design, not by configuration.
Zero servers
There is no Starling backend. No relays, no STUN, no signaling service. Devices speak directly to each other on the LAN.
End-to-end encrypted
Discovery, join requests, room renames, messages, and file transfers are all encrypted with a key derived from the shared room passcode (HKDF + ChaCha20-Poly1305).
Works offline
Starling does not need an internet connection - just a working LAN or Wi-Fi between the devices. Use it on isolated networks, in flight, or anywhere a server-based app would fail.
Approval gated
Once a room has members, a current member must explicitly Allow each new device before any messages flow.
No accounts, no telemetry
You never sign up, never log in, never identify yourself to anyone except the people already in your room.
Quiet on the wire
UDP discovery probes only fire while you are joined, with a sparse heartbeat after that. The chat itself is a direct TCP connection between peers.
Download
Get Starling for your desktop.
Builds are planned for Windows Intel, Windows ARM, macOS Apple silicon, and Linux.