XChat, the standalone app for messaging on X, is offered on iOS now

XChat, the standalone app for accessing X’s messaging function, is offered to obtain now for iOS. X first urged it might be stripping direct messaging from X in 2025, however not less than for now, XChat is offered within the unique X app, the online and this new app.

Based on its launch video, the brand new XChat app affords lots of the parts of contemporary messaging X had already introduced to its chats feature, like the flexibility to delete and edit messages, block screenshots and ship disappearing messages. The brand new XChat app additionally helps video and audio calls, and X claims that each one messages despatched with XChat are end-to-end encrypted.

XChat will even be anticipated to be the house of any teams that fashioned round X’s Communities function. The social platform recently announced that it was retiring Communities on the finish of Might, and urged that XChat’s help for bigger group chats may very well be a worthwhile various. XChat’s group chats can at the moment have 350 members, however X plans to broaden that quantity sooner or later.

Elon Musk’s unique pitch after he rebranded Twitter as X, was to show the platform into an “everything app,” the place issues like an algorithmic feed, messaging, job boards and even payments may exist side-by-side. A standalone messaging app looks as if the precise reverse of that, however it may also replicate the place X finds itself in 2026. The corporate is now a subsidiary of xAI, and xAI itself is part of SpaceX. Musk’s push into AI seems to be the going concern, and cloning one thing like WeChat would possibly simply be much less essential.