Chats, threads and topics
Applies to: SimpleTwo 0.9.x · Checked: 20.09.2026
1. Kinds of conversation
| Kind | When | What is special |
|---|---|---|
| Direct chat | a conversation with one person | no title — it is just the two of you |
| Group | a team, a project | members are added; there are administrators |
| Channel | announcements, one-to-many | administrators write; member comments are enabled separately |
| Secret chat | one to one, content the server must not have | end-to-end encryption, marked E2EE |
A channel is either public — listed in the channel directory, anyone may join — or private, entered by invitation link only. The link can be rotated (the old one stops working) or switched off entirely.
In a group or a channel an administrator can appoint other administrators, remove members, ban somebody (an invitation link will not let them back in) and limit which reactions are available.
2. Threads
Reply in thread is how you discuss one message without tearing up the main conversation.
Replies in a thread stay visible in the room's main timeline as well: the thread only filters them. So nothing "disappears into a branch" for the people not following it.
A thread can be named, followed or muted, marked resolved and reopened, and it can be locked against further replies.
3. Topics
A large room can be split into topics: members land on a list of topics instead of straight into the conversation. Topics are created by administrators.
- Everything written before the split stays in the General topic — nothing is moved anywhere.
- A topic can be closed and reopened; closed ones are kept separately.
- Turning topics off makes the room one timeline again, and messages from different topics interleave by time. The topics themselves are kept.
4. Attachments
You can send photos and video (including straight from the camera), any file, a contact and a location. With no connection the file is queued and leaves when the connection comes back.
Downloads are saved with a long press; on a Mac there is "show in Finder". A file that is too large is refused up front, not after a long upload.
5. Secret chats
A secret chat is a one-to-one conversation with end-to-end encryption: messages are encrypted for your devices and the server cannot decrypt them. Three practical consequences:
- no agent or bot can read a secret chat — not even your own;
- a call in a secret chat goes directly between devices, so no link into that call can be made;
- if the other side has no key yet (they have not signed in on that device, for instance) the message will not send, and the app says so.
6. Presence
Next to a person you see Online, Offline with when they were last seen, and also In a call and In a meeting — so you do not ring somebody who is already talking.