XChat launches April 23

X Corp confirmed last week what users had been speculating about for months: XChat, the company’s standalone end-to-end encrypted messenger, ships on April 23, 2026. The app has been on App Store pre-order since early March and now has a firm release date.

What’s in the box on day one: encrypted one-to-one and group messaging, support for English plus 45 additional languages, and a sign-in flow that piggybacks on your existing X account. What isn’t: an Android version, a desktop client, message backup to iCloud, or any kind of paid tier. All of those are described as “later” in the small print. The iOS build requires iOS 26 (iPadOS 26 on iPad) and weighs 175.8 MB.

The encryption story matters because X has historically been a public-by-default product. Direct messages on the main X app have never been end-to-end encrypted by default for everyone. XChat reverses that posture: encryption is on, always, with no toggle to turn it off. The keys live on your phone. There is no plaintext backup. If your account is compromised, an attacker still cannot read your old messages.

We’ll cover the technical encryption details in the next post.