Nothing Chats was a first-party instant messaging application developed by Nothing, designed to let Nothing phone users send and receive messages via Apple’s iMessage; visually represented as the coveted “blue bubbles”. It was made available in beta exclusively for the Nothing Phone (2) in November 2023, but was promptly withdrawn due to critical security and privacy concerns.

Nothing revealed the Nothing Chats app on 14 November 2023 in collaboration with third-party developer, Sunbird.^[1]

The app appeared on the Google Play Store in open beta before promptly being removed on 18 November 2023 after reports of security concerns. Nothing cited “several bugs” and postponed the official launch indefinitely.^[2]

The app aimed to eliminate the green-bubble stigma by enabling Phone (2) users’ texts to appear as blue iMessages on recipients’ iPhones.

Users logged in with an Apple ID. Sunbird routed messages through virtual Mac Mini servers to mimic an Apple device connection.^[3] According to the app’s FAQ, all messages were supposed to be end-to-end encrypted and not accessible by Sunbird.^[4]

A number of users raised concerns with security and privacy of the app:

Lack of encryption: All messages and files sent or received by the user were delivered by Nothing Chats in encrypted form to two devices simultaneously - the Google Firebase database and the Sentry error monitoring service, where Sunbird employees could access these messages.

Public data exposure: The token required for authentication in the Firebase server was transmitted over HTTP and could therefore be intercepted by anyone. This token provided access to all messages and files of all users of the app.^[4]

The app’s removal from the Google Play Store was swift, and Nothing posted an update on X stating that the launch will be delayed “until further notice”.^[2]

Nothing took a blow to its reputation, as industry media branded the app as a “privacy and security disaster”.^[5]

As of now, there’s no plan to relaunch Nothing Chats.^[6]