How do I start a secret chat?
Open the profile of the person you want to talk to, tap the menu, and choose Start Secret Chat. It opens as a separate conversation alongside your ordinary one with them.
Step by step
- Open a chat with the person, or find them in your contacts.
- Tap their name at the top to open the profile.
- Tap the menu, shown as three dots.
- Choose Start Secret Chat.
The other person has to open Telegram before the chat becomes active, because the encryption keys are exchanged between the two devices directly.
The three rules that surprise people
- It lives on one device. A Secret Chat started on your phone will never appear on your tablet, desktop or the web version.
- Logging out destroys it. Signing out and back in on the same handset loses every Secret Chat on it.
- You can have several. Nothing stops you creating multiple separate Secret Chats with the same person; each is independent.
What you get inside one
End-to-end encryption with keys only on the two devices, self-destruct timers you set per chat, a notification when the other side takes a screenshot, and a restriction on forwarding messages out. Each chat also has a key visualisation both participants can compare to confirm nothing sits in the middle.
Secret Chats are not available on the web version, because it cannot hold device-bound keys the same way. If you do not see the option, check which client you are using.