Frequently asked questions about Grom

Grom is a fast and secure messaging app. It's easy to use and free. You can use Grom on every one of your devices at once: messages sync across any number of phones and browsers (Grom Web).

With Grom you can send messages, photos, videos, and files of any kind, and create groups and channels to broadcast to an unlimited audience. You can message the contacts already in your phone, or find people by username. We support end-to-end encrypted secret chats, voice and video calls, and group calls.

Grom is for anyone who wants fast, reliable messaging and calls. Businesses and small teams will like Grom's large groups, usernames, and powerful file-sharing features.

Grom groups support supergroups with granular admin rights, reactions, stickers, and pinned messages that help keep large communities organized. Public channels are open to anyone and are well suited to broadcasting to a wide audience.

Unlike many popular messengers, Grom is a cloud messenger with seamless sync — instant access to your messages from several devices at once, with unlimited photos, videos, and files in your chats.

The main thing that sets Grom apart from big commercial messengers is that it's self-hosted. Every Grom network runs on its own server, controlled by its own administrator, rather than inside someone else's corporate cloud. Sending private messages is free, and stays free.

Grom is currently available as an Android app (5.0 and up) and as Grom Web — a browser version that works on any device with no install, at webk.unseenwallet.com.

You can be logged into Grom on any number of your devices at once — just use the same phone number to log in, and your cloud chats sync instantly.

Unlike large messengers owned by a single global company, Grom is a platform anyone can deploy under their own brand. Every Grom network (like this one) has its own administrator, responsible for the server, moderation, and handling user requests within that particular network.

No. Correspondence data is never used to serve ads or sold to third parties. If a network runs ads at all, they can only appear in public channels, based purely on the channel's topic — never on the content of private correspondence.

Grom uses a monetization model that puts users first: paid messages and subscriptions in Stars (the app's own in-app currency), plus an affiliate program for channels and bots. This revenue helps cover the network's own infrastructure costs.

The two most important pieces of online privacy should be: protecting private conversations from outside snooping, and protecting personal data from third parties like marketers and advertisers. That's why Grom doesn't analyze the content of your correspondence for any commercial purpose — see the Privacy Policy for more.

The app has a "Report" button on any message, channel, group, or bot — this flags the content for the network's administrator to review. Tap the message and choose "Report" from the menu, or reach out directly to the administrator of the specific network where the violation was found.

If you think a restriction was applied by mistake, message the Grom SpamBot in the app — it'll show the reason for the restriction and let you file an appeal for the network's administrator to review. More on the Safety page.

You can message anyone in your phone's contacts who also has Grom. Another way to reach someone is by typing their username into the search field — you don't need to know their phone number for that.

People can reach you on Grom if they know your phone number, or if you message them first. If they don't know your number, they can find you once you're both in the same group, or if you've set a username — then anyone can find you through global search.

If you allow contact syncing in Settings, the app will show you who in your address book is already on Grom, and notify you whenever someone new joins.

Share an invite link to a group or channel, or just tell a friend to install the Grom app or open Grom Web and sign up with their phone number.

One checkmark means the message has been sent to the server. Two checkmarks means it's been delivered to the recipient's device. The color of the second checkmark shows whether the message has been read yet.

Yes. In your privacy settings you can restrict who sees your "online"/"last seen" status — for everyone, or for specific contacts.

By default, everyone except blocked contacts can see your "online" status — but you can change this in your privacy settings, the same way you can control your last-seen visibility.

Yes, messages in one-on-one chats can be deleted for both sides with no time limit. In groups and channels, deleting a message removes it for every member, provided you have the right permissions.

Yes, one-on-one and group audio and video calls run on the network's own call server, with no third-party middlemen.

Yes, that's exactly what channels are for — they support an unlimited number of subscribers and get their own unseenwallet.com/username link for easy sharing.

Grom supergroups support detailed admin permissions, discussion topics, pinned messages, reactions, and stickers — everything a large community needs to stay organized.

Groups (supergroups) are chats where every member can see and talk to everyone else. Channels are a one-way broadcasting tool: subscribers see the author's posts but can only talk among themselves in a separate, linked comments chat, if the channel's admin has turned that on.

In the app, open the new chat menu, choose "Group" or "Channel," add a name and photo, and optionally a username for public access.

Yes, the owner of a group or channel can appoint admins with finely tunable permissions: moderation, inviting members, publishing posts, managing invite links, and more.

Through an invite link — you can create several with different expiry dates or usage-count limits — or by adding people directly from your contacts, if their privacy settings allow it.

Yes, if a comments chat is linked to the channel — then each post gets its own discussion thread, where subscribers can talk among themselves.

A username is a public name (for example, @grom) that lets people find you, your channel, or your bot without exchanging phone numbers. You can set a username in your profile or channel settings; registration normally requires at least 5 characters.

These are direct links to a chat, channel, or specific message — just like t.me in other Telegram-family messengers. Opened in the app, they jump straight to the right chat or post; opened in a browser or another messenger, they show a proper preview of the real content and offer to open Grom.

A username can contain Latin letters, digits, and underscores, and must start with a letter.

No, a username is optional for a personal account. Without one, you can only be found by phone number or through a shared group.

No, a username never reveals your phone number — unless you share it yourself in the conversation.

In your profile or channel settings, open the username field and clear it — the account or channel becomes reachable only by phone number or invite link.

Usernames are given out first-come, first-served; if an account or channel with the name you want has been inactive for a long time, the username may become available again automatically.

Report it to the network's administrator or through the Grom SpamBot — include a link to the suspicious account or channel so it can be reviewed.

All data travels over an encrypted connection between the app and the server. Secret chats, calls, and file transfers within secret chats get an additional layer of end-to-end encryption.

Grom's secret chats use end-to-end encryption, leave no trace on the server, support self-destructing messages, and don't allow forwarding. Secret chats aren't part of the Grom cloud and only exist on the devices they were created on.

Grom supports two layers of encryption. Server-client encryption is used in cloud chats (one-on-one and group); secret chats add an extra layer of end-to-end encryption directly between clients. All data — text, media, or files — is encrypted the same way.

Grom's Android client is built on the open-source client code of the Telegram protocol — you can check how it works yourself. Grom's core mission as a platform isn't profiting from analyzing your correspondence, so commercial interests don't get in the way of that mission.

No — just make sure the visualized encryption key for your secret chat matches the key shown in your contact's own secret chat settings. More on this in the "Secret chats" section below.

Grom helps with secure data transfer and communication: whatever you send and receive can't be decrypted if intercepted by your internet provider, your Wi-Fi router's owner, or any other third party. But no app can protect against someone with physical or root access to an unlocked device. For sensitive information, we recommend secret chats with a self-destruct timer, along with two-step verification and a strong app passcode.

Logging in with an SMS code is the industry standard, but for extra security you can set a password in Settings > Privacy and Security > Two-Step Verification. Once enabled, logging in requires both the SMS code and the password.

Root access lets an attacker bypass protections built into the operating system, read process memory, or access the device's internal storage. Once an attacker has root access, no app can honestly be called secure, no matter how good its encryption is.

Every message in a secret chat uses end-to-end encryption — only you and the recipient can read them, no one else, including the server. You can't forward messages out of a secret chat, and deleting one on one device deletes it on the other too.

Secret chats only exist on the devices they were created on and aren't part of the Grom cloud — they can only be accessed from the device they were sent from or received on.

Open the profile of the person you want to chat with, tap "...", then "Start Secret Chat." Keep in mind: if you log out, every secret chat on that device will be lost.

A self-destruct timer is available for any message in a secret chat. Tap the clock icon, pick a time limit — the countdown starts as soon as the message appears on the recipient's screen. When time's up, the message disappears from both devices.

Unfortunately, there's no reliable way to block screenshots on every device. We try to notify you about screenshots taken in secret chats, but you should always only share sensitive information with people you trust.

When a secret chat is created, the two devices exchange encryption keys. Once the connection is set up, the app generates an image and a code that visualize this key. If the image matches on both devices, the connection is safe from interception, and no man-in-the-middle attack can succeed. Compare the key over a trusted channel — in person is best.

Regular ("cloud") chats are deliberately stored on the server, encrypted, so you can open your chat history from any of your devices, even if you lose your phone. Secret chats give up that convenience for maximum privacy — it's a deliberate tradeoff between two different kinds of chats, not a limitation.

You can message people in one-on-one chats and groups without revealing your phone number. By default, only people who've saved it in their own address book can see it. You can change this in Settings > Privacy and Security > Phone Number.

Your account settings have a "Change Number" option — your old number gets linked to the new one with no loss of messages, contacts, or settings. Important: make sure you have access to the new number first, or you risk losing access to your account. If you no longer have access to your old number, just log in with the new one as usual and contact the network's administrator to migrate your data manually.

On Android: Settings > (the three dots in the top corner) > Log Out. If you log out, your cloud messages stay saved, but every secret chat on that device will be lost.

In Settings, tap your phone number, then "Change Number." Every contact, message, media file, and secret chat is preserved across all your devices. If the new number already has a different Grom account on it, you'll need to delete that account first.

The app's settings have an account-deletion option. Deleting is irreversible: it removes every message, media file, contact, and profile from the server. Groups and channels you created become "orphaned" with no owner, while any admins you appointed keep their rights.

Every piece of data tied to the account is removed from the server. Your contacts will still be able to talk in groups you created, and will keep their own copies of any messages you sent them. Account deletion can't be undone: if you register again, your history, contacts, and groups won't come back.

If you stop using Grom and don't log in for a long time (18 months by default), your account is deleted along with every message, media file, and contact stored on the server. The exact period can be changed in your settings.

Yes. Individual messages or entire chats can be deleted for both sides at any time. In Settings > Privacy and Security you'll find options to delete synced contacts, cloud drafts, and frequent-contacts metadata. Your profile photos and posted stories can be deleted separately in their own sections.

If you have access to Grom on another device: turn on two-step verification in Settings, then end the old device's session from the "Active Sessions" list — no one can log in again without the password. Also contact your carrier to block the old SIM card.

If you don't have access to any other device: first block the old SIM card with your carrier, wait for a replacement with the same number, log in to Grom, and end the old device's session from "Active Sessions."

Your profile shows a numeric rating based on your volume of successful Stars transactions. It helps channel and bot owners see that a user's requests can be trusted. Buying gifts, paid messages, and other Stars transactions raise the rating; refunds lower it.

If an account is restricted due to reports from other users, it's frozen: chats are still visible, but you can't send messages or post content. You can appeal the restriction right in the app through the Grom SpamBot — the network's administrator reviews the request.

Bots are small programs that run right inside Grom. Modern bots can open full mini apps with their own interface and do a lot more than just reply to messages.

Message the built-in BotFather bot in the app — it'll walk you through creating a new bot and give you an access token for the Bot API. You'll need some basic programming skills to make the bot actually do anything.

Block the bot from its profile, the same way you would a regular user. Many bots also support a /help command with instructions on how to stop them.

Bots aren't fundamentally different from regular users: they see your public name, username, profile photo, and whatever messages you send them directly — and nothing else, unless you share more yourself. Never give a bot your passwords, verification codes, or card details, even if it politely asks.

By default, a bot only sees messages sent directly to it — you'll see a "has no access to messages" note next to it in the member list. A bot's developer can turn this privacy mode off, and then the bot will see the group's entire conversation — marked as "has access to messages."

No. Bots are mostly third-party products, built through the Bot API, and aren't controlled by the network's administration unless explicitly labeled otherwise.

Mini apps are full applications that run right inside Grom, built by third-party developers on top of the bot platform. They can have their own interface, payments, subscriptions, and affiliate programs paid in Stars.

Yes — that's the whole point of Grom. Unlike large centralized messengers, Grom is deployed on its own infrastructure under its own brand, and every such network is completely independent from every other one: its own server, its own user base, its own administrator.

Yes, developers can build bots through the Bot API — the platform is compatible with the bot protocol used across the Telegram family, so most of that protocol's existing documentation applies here too.

Yes, it's available on the Privacy page.

Every Grom network has its own administrator — reach out to them directly, or through the Grom SpamBot, if you'd like to help with user support for that specific network.

Make sure you're entering your mobile number in international format: +(country code)(carrier code)(your number). If you run into trouble registering or logging in, contact your network's administrator.

If you've recently used Grom on another device, your login code may arrive directly in the app instead of by SMS — check the verification-code chat on any of your connected devices. Getting the code through the app doesn't replace the need for a working phone number tied to your account — otherwise you risk losing access for good.

Go to Grom Settings > Notifications and Sounds and make sure notifications are enabled with high priority. Check that a specific contact or group isn't muted, and that Google Play Services is installed on your device.

Xiaomi devices, and some others, have aggressive battery-saving that disables background notifications — add Grom to the list of apps allowed to auto-start in your device's security settings.

If a friend has Grom but you don't see them in your contacts list: update the app to the latest version, fully restart it (closing it from the recent-apps list), or temporarily rename the contact in your phone book (add a character, then remove it). If that doesn't help, log out and back in (remember: this deletes secret chats).

Open a chat with the person, tap the header at the top to open their profile, then tap ⋮ in the top corner and choose "Delete Contact." To keep the contact from reappearing, also delete it from your phone's own contacts — otherwise Grom will sync and add it right back.

Secret chats are tied to a specific pair of devices and their current session — they're never available in the cloud. If you log out and back in, every secret chat is lost.

If your account has received reports about unwanted messages, a restriction may have been applied: you can only message people who already have your number saved. If you think this restriction is a mistake, file an appeal through the Grom SpamBot.

Some users set a small Stars fee for messages from people outside their contacts — this is the "Paid Messages" feature, which helps cut down on spam in their inbox. You'll see how many Stars are needed before sending; if the recipient replies, the cost may be refunded. If you don't want to pay, wait for them to message you first, or ask them to add you as a contact.

The app may request background microphone access if you minimize it during a call, a video recording, or a voice message. Permission monitors on some devices (Samsung, Xiaomi) can mistakenly show a camera-access notification when the app is only querying camera information, not actually using it. These requests only concern camera information — the app never actually uses the camera in the background.