# hellotern — Private chat, calls & rooms

> Private chat, calls & rooms (iPhone/iPad app by Saad Maan.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hellotern/id6796310499 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Saad Maan](https://appshunter.io/developer/6796310501)
- Category: Social Networking, Utilities
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 16.0 · 44 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-09-29
- Data updated: 2026-10-08
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hellotern/id6796310499/reviews.md

## What is hellotern?

Tern is a private messenger for the people you actually talk to: end-to-end encrypted rooms, voice and video calls, and small communities, with the intelligence running on your phone, inside the encryption, instead of on a server that reads along.

NO ACCOUNT, NO PHONE NUMBER
Open Tern, pick a name, create a room. Share its invite code or link and the people you invite are in. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to verify, nothing to sell.

ENCRYPTED END TO END, INCLUDING CALLS
Messages, photos, voice notes and files are sealed on your device with modern group encryption (MLS) and stay sealed through the relay. Voice and video calls are encrypted frame by frame on your phone; the call server forwards packets it cannot decode.

CALLS THAT HOLD UP
One-to-one and group voice and video calls, ring everyone in a room at once, add someone mid-call, switch from voice to video, picture-in-picture, call history, and a Test call engine button in Call diagnostics for when a network is being difficult.

ROOMS THAT FEEL LIKE HOME
Channels and threads, pinned messages, polls and events, voice rooms you can hop in and out of, a Space Home that shows who is around, disappearing and view-once media, stickers you cut out yourself.

INTELLIGENCE THAT STAYS ON YOUR PHONE
Catch Me Up summarizes what you missed, in eight languages, from your own device. Search finds the message you half-remember. Voice notes are transcribed locally. No message leaves your phone to make any of this work, and everything AI-generated is labelled as such.

CALM BY CONSTRUCTION
No feed, no algorithmic ranking, no streaks, no autoplay. A chronological view is the only view. You are always caught up when the messages end.

WHAT WE CANNOT SEE
Tern's relay stores sealed envelopes it cannot open and forwards call packets it cannot decode. Notifications are content-free nudges. There are no ads, no trackers, and no third-party analytics in the app or on hellotern.com.

Tern is free. Details of what the app can and cannot do, and how the encryption works, are at hellotern.com.


## Version history (last 2 releases)

### 1.1 — 2026-10-07

What's new in Tern 1.1

Screen sharing
- Share your iPhone screen in a call, and watch a screen someone else shares with you.

Calls and video
- In a video call, double-tap a video to see the whole picture, or pinch to zoom and drag.

Rooms and messages
- Give a room its own photo.
- Send documents (such as PDFs) as messages.
- Links in messages can be tapped.
- The chat list now ends with "You're all caught up", so you know when you have seen everything.

Privacy and safety
- App Lock: require Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode to open Tern.
- Safer rooms: this version refuses messages, member changes and attachments that were not sealed for the room's members, and checks every attachment it receives before saving it. Some screens now say more exactly what an invite code, removing someone, call history and updates do.
- Fewer false "You have new messages" alerts: coming online, typing and read receipts from this iPhone no longer wake other people's phones.
- Report AI output: the Catch me up summary and digest, and reply suggestions, now have a Report button. It shows you exactly what will be sent and opens your email app addressed to abuse@hellotern.com; nothing is sent until you send that email.

Tasks
- A task with "Keep watching" turned on now keeps checking for as long as it says (up to 90 days); before, it stopped after two hours.

Updates
- Update prompts now match where you installed Tern: App Store users are only asked to update when the App Store has the new version, and TestFlight testers are sent to TestFlight.

iOS 16
- The More menu in a chat and in the chat list is now a plain button that opens a list of options.

Your messages stay end-to-end encrypted. Catch me up and reply suggestions still run on your phone.

### 1.0 — 2026-09-29

No release notes.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-08.*