XChat, the standalone app for accessing X’s messaging characteristic, is offered to obtain now for iOS. X first steered it could be stripping direct messaging from X in 2025, however at the least 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 gives 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 can even be anticipated to be the house of any teams that fashioned round X’s Communities characteristic. The social platform recently announced that it was retiring Communities on the finish of Might, and steered that XChat’s help for bigger group chats could possibly be a worthwhile different. XChat’s group chats can at present have 350 contributors, however X plans to increase 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 might exist side-by-side. A standalone messaging app looks as if the precise reverse of that, but it surely may additionally 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 may simply be much less necessary.
