# Retichat-android Testing Needed

_Showcase · started by jrl290 on Thu, May 28, 2026 4:26 PM_

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## Original post

**jrl290** · Thu, May 28, 2026 4:26 PM

I now have released an Android version of my Retichat LXMF/RFed client on Github (and soon Google Play store): 
https://github.com/jrl290/Retichat-android/releases/tag/v0.1.1

All open source. Heavily AI written (yes I am an app developer of 15 years)

I did a more detailed description of Retichat and RFed on the iOS release post here: 
https://rns.recipes/forum/showcase/retichat-ios-testing-needed

But here are the highlights:

The design goal of Retichat is to be a (mostly) grandma friendly chat app, hiding most of Reticulum's complexity behind familiar chat interface. 

Secondary to that goal is to showcase a subscription-centric distribution mechanism called RFed, which is an extension to LXMF store-and-forward server and is heavily based on it. In Retichat, this enables chatroom "Channels" that can be either public or private, but is designed to be generic for other uses

And the two other unique features are a Group mode that requires no extra infrastructure and adds minimal extra protocol, and true mobile push notification. Push notification requires RFed but enables mobile clients to avoid having a constant background connection which is a major battery drain and isn't allowed on Apple devices

Everything is early but definitely converging as lessons are learned and the code gets refined

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## Reply 1

**Search** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 1:41 PM

Reti-Chat continually crashes when I try to enter the setup to create an identity.

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## Reply 2

**jrl290** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 2:43 PM

Just a symbol problem caused by the minify. Here's a new release: https://github.com/jrl290/Retichat-android/releases/tag/v0.1.1

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## Reply 3

**Search** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 6:38 PM

Yes, that did solve the problem.  Thank you!

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## Reply 4

**Search** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 6:50 PM

I am curious what Groups and Channels refer to.  Are channels related to RRC channels?

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## Reply 5

**jrl290** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 7:40 PM

**Search** wrote:
> I am curious what Groups and Channels refer to.  Are channels related to RRC channels?

RRC requires a server to host the channel and has control over the channel

An RFed Channel requires at least one federation node is otherwise not defined by any hardware. Much like the Reticulum network itself. The "Channel" is ephemeral. You could type anything into the address box and it would be a Channel. The key is that the RFed nodes synchronize with each other in order to distribute messages to anyone who also has that Channel address

Groups are purely adhoc. Nothing outside of the Reticulum network is required. The group participants do all of the message distribution

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## Reply 6

**Search** · Fri, Jun 5, 2026 8:57 PM

Cool - thanks for the information... I also found https://github.com/jrl290/RFed and went through the README.  I admit I don't quit understand all of it but am pretty excited about the possibilties.

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