Among the serious alternatives to WhatsApp, Olvid, a French application, is doing well. Its operating system, radically different from the competition, gives it increased security. Here’s everything you need to know to get started with Olvid.
Quitting WhatsApp in favor of another application is not easy. While the most popular secure alternatives are Signal and Telegram, they both ask the user for a phone number as an ID to sign up. This centralized directory system, very practical for automatically finding all your contacts who also use the application, therefore acts as a trusted third party to validate the identity of each user, which in some cases can pose security problems.
Olvid, a French messaging app, which prides itself on being the most secure messaging app in the world, works on a different model. The application requires its users to mutually verify their identity using a procedure requiring the transmission of a code displayed on the screen of one and the other of the users. A method certainly more restrictive than with the competition, but which allows to have a higher level of security. In the following lines, you will discover everything you need to know to get started with Olvid.
1. Download Olvid
Start by downloading Olvid to your terminal. This secure messaging application allows you to send free messages with your loved ones, but requires a subscription charged at 5 euros per month to make calls. More secure than WhatsApp and others, it does not use a centralized directory and requires manual validation of new contacts.
Download Olvid for Android (Free)
Download Olvid for iPhone (Free)
2. Create your account
Launch the app on your device and on the first page that appears, tap on New User. On the My Id page, fill in the information you want to appear on your profile and press Save.
Then go through the application’s presentation pages, and choose your preferences, particularly in terms of notifications, then validate your registration via the Welcome to Olvid button.
3. Invite contacts
You should arrive on the main page of the application, empty of messages, but especially of contacts. Olvid does not ask for your phone number or your email address, it does not manage a centralized directory and therefore cannot find your contacts who use it. You will therefore have to manually add and validate your contacts to be able to chat with them.
To add your first contact, tap the blue + button. Olvid displays your ID along with a QR Code. If your potential contacts are by your side, they can follow the same process and accept your invitation by scanning your displayed QR Code.
On the other hand, if your contacts are not by your side, you will have to use the Share my Id function of the application to send your invitation by another means. It could be a copy-pasted link in any messaging application, for example. The person you invite will then only have to click on the link received to join you on Olvid.
You will then be prompted to Confirm invitation. To do this, tap Send invitation.
Your contact should then receive your invitation in their inbox on their Olvid application and will have to press Accept to validate the connection.
4. Check your contacts
Once this invitation has been accepted, both users see a validation code displayed on their screen. Each of them must then communicate to the other his code so that they both accept each other mutually. It is only after this mutual acceptance that the secure conversation channel is created in Olvid.
Press you and your contact on OK to finalize the process.
5. Start a conversation
Now go to the tab dedicated to conversations to access the automatically generated discussion with your new contact. You can of course exchange text messages, but also share documents, photos, videos and even scan documents on the fly to send them to your interlocutor.
6. Customize settings
Don’t forget to customize the general app settings. To do this, on iOS, tap on your avatar and then on the cogwheel icon to enter the app settings.
On Android, just tap the options menu, represented by three little dots, and enter Settings.
Review the various settings offered, including those for Discussions (iOS) and Privacy (Android) to enable/disable read receipts according to your preferences.
You will also be able to define the message retention period, manage preferences for the visibility of ephemeral messages, etc. It is also from the application settings that you can generate a backup key necessary to encrypt the backup that you will send to the cloud.