Sidecall — Private Video Calls & Chat

Private P2P voice & video calls with encrypted messaging. No phone number, no email, no account required.

Sidecall is a private phone and chat that lives in your browser's side panel. Calls go straight from your browser to theirs, and messages are encrypted so that nobody in between — us included — can read them. There is no account. You are not asked for a phone number, an email address or a password, because there is nothing to sign in to. When you install it you get an ID, you give that ID to the people you want to talk to, and that is the whole setup. WHAT IT DOES • Voice and video calls, one to one or with up to four people at once • End-to-end encrypted chat, with messages held for delivery if the other person is offline • A side panel, so a call or a conversation sits beside the page you are reading instead of taking over a tab • Screen sharing in one-to-one calls • Contacts, with a name you choose — nothing is imported from anywhere • Desktop notifications for incoming calls and messages HOW CALLS WORK A call is a direct connection between two browsers. Our server introduces them to each other and then has nothing more to do with it: the audio and video never pass through us. Some networks will not allow a direct connection — office and university firewalls, some mobile carriers. On those, the call is passed through a relay so that it still works. Relay is free and always has been; it is not held back for paying users, because there are no paying users. In a group call every participant connects directly to every other, so a call of four is three connections each. Four is the limit for that reason, and the limit is stated before you reach it rather than after. WHAT WE STORE Your ID and your contacts live in your browser and nowhere else. We cannot see them, and we cannot recover them for you — which is why the extension offers you a backup file after your first call. Messages sent to someone who is offline wait on our server until they connect. They are encrypted before they leave your browser, so what waits there is unreadable to us. Nothing is sold, there is no advertising, and there are no analytics products in the extension. WHAT IT COSTS Nothing. Every feature is free and there is no premium tier. If you want to help with the servers there is a donation page, which is voluntary and unlocks nothing, because there is nothing to unlock. PERMISSIONS Four, and each one does a single thing: • Notifications — to tell you about a call or a message when the panel is closed • Storage — to keep your ID, contacts and settings in your browser • Side panel — to open the panel the extension lives in • Alarms — to reconnect to the signalling server after your connection drops, so you are reachable without having to open the panel It does not ask to read your browsing history, and it cannot see the pages you visit. What's new in 2.0.0 Group calls. Call up to three people at once, audio or video, with a tile for each person and a ring around whoever is speaking. One place to start a call. Type a name or paste an ID, pick up to three people, and press Audio or Video. The same field does one-to-one and group calls. A call page that fits any window. Tiles rearrange from one column to two, every control has a word under it, and the camera button says what it will do — including "No camera" when the computer has none. Keep a copy of your ID. After your first call, Sidecall offers you a backup file. Your ID and contacts live only in this browser; this is how you make sure you do not lose them. The connection status tells the truth. One line under the header when the connection is down, with a Retry that rebuilds it, and the extension now reconnects by itself instead of waiting for you to open the panel. Settings are grouped by what is at stake, and a microphone blocked by Chrome now explains what that costs and how to undo it.