Local chat
Launch it on the second machine — it shows up in the list within seconds. Nothing to configure.
A local chat for your people
A chat for gaming at home.
Play with your kids, your partner or your friends. Voice, screen and files go straight between two windows — with no server in the middle.
Download for Windows
From GitHub Releases · 11 MB
today
Wanna play something?
sure, let me wrap up and I'm in
🫖
14:03
Tea
you asked Nadia
🫡 on it
Done ✅
☕
14:11
Coffee
Nadia offers coffee
waiting
👍🤔⏳
8/10🔥
💯
more…
🫖Tea
☕Coffee
🥗Salad
🍣Sushi
Message
What it does
File transfer
PC to PC directly, any size. By paperclip, drag-and-drop or from the clipboard.
Call
Voice and video between two windows. No servers in between — hence the low latency.
Screen share
The whole desktop or a single window — separate from the call, so you can do both or either.
Everything is encrypted
Traffic between machines is always closed — you can't turn it off. History on disk can be password-locked if you want.
Themes
Eight palettes, each with a light and a dark. Or your own photo as the background.
Reply with one emoji
Offer coffee, ask for dumplings, call someone into a game — on the other side it's a card with buttons, not text. Hover the circles under it — they fan out, you tap one.
🫡On it
👍Yes
🙋Me too
🤔Maybe
⏳Later
😤Nope
✅Done
And a score for anything
0💀
5🤷
8🔥
10🏆
☕
19:02
Coffee
you offered Nadia
👍 yes
🥟
19:05
Dumplings
Nadia wants dumplings
waiting
🫡👍🙋
🎮
soon
Into a game
you called Nadia to a match
🫡 on the way
How it looks
A local home messenger — a lightweight chat for home, with no internet, accounts or server
Made for local communication, without launching Discord or anything else.
It adds ways to interact with reactions and wishes — suggest a break, call someone to play, ask for tea or say it's bedtime.
Nearby is a local chat over your LAN for computers in one flat or office. It links machines directly over your local network (a Wi-Fi router or a wired one): no internet, no registration and accounts, no server in the middle. Launch Nearby on two Windows PCs — they find each other on the network within seconds, and you can start typing.
Besides messages, the chat can transfer files over the local network of any size from computer to computer, make a call with voice and video and share your screen — all straight between machines, so it is fast and free of cloud-service lag. Traffic between computers is always encrypted, and the history on disk can be locked with a password.
Questions
Do I need the internet?
No. Nearby works over your local network. The internet is not required at all.
Is it free?
Yes, completely free and ad-free. The app collects no data about you.
Install
Launch it on your PCs — they'll find each other on their own.
Report project issues on GitHub. For suggestions and feedback — come to Discord.