Video calls: one-to-one video calling with camera controls, call quality labels and a relay option. Free accounts send up to 480p; Premium up to 720p. Calls minimize to a slim top bar so the rest of the app stays usable.
Group calls: start a call in any group. Up to 6 people, audio-first with the camera off until you enable it. Free accounts send 480p and Premium 720p. The sidebar shows an active call and the group header offers Join/Open. Video and group calls are not available over Tor.
Group safety: leave a group from the chat header, group panel or conversation menu, with a confirmation prompt. Being added to a group now creates an invitation you can accept or decline; nobody is added silently.
Feedback: report a bug or send feedback from the sidebar; messages go to [email protected]. Three submissions are allowed per account per hour.
API hardening: stricter request validation and rate-limit handling make API calls more resistant to abuse and external attacks.
Reliability and fixes: rate-limit retries no longer keep you locked out, wait times are shown accurately, and modal, banner and sidebar layout bugs are fixed.
Android 1.5: system back returns to the sidebar, notches and system bars are handled, the launcher icon is updated, and the APK is available at /download.
Cleanup: status emoji and the test-notification control are removed, and message sounds stay on.
1.7 — October 2026
Web
Tor access: Markero now has an official v3 onion service for people who need private communication without exposing their network location. Read the announcement.
Notifications fixed: browser push subscriptions now accept standard base64 keys, so Chrome and macOS devices can receive background notifications again.
Support page: a proper contact page covers account help, payments, privacy requests and security reports.
Login security hardening: login and registration forms now always submit as POST, credentials in URL query strings are rejected, and authentication pages are no longer cached by the service worker.
Unread and read controls: a “New messages” divider appears where you left off, and “Mark all read” clears the sidebar in one click.
Payment history: see past Premium orders, their status and a link to reopen an unpaid invoice from the Premium panel.
Install app: supported browsers now offer an in-app install button.
Less background polling: activity and call polling slow down when the tab is hidden or the connection is metered.
Smaller fixes: stopped a rare 500 when stale typing indicators were cleaned up, skipped redundant read calls, and made signup easier to resume after leaving the authenticator step.
1.6 — October 2026
Web · Android app unchanged
Premium is here: support Markero with an optional badge — 1 month $4, 3 months $10, 6 months $15, paid in crypto (BTC, ETH, USDT and more via NOWPayments). Premium also raises file uploads to 100 MB, storage to 1 GB, and removes the private-channel member cap. Purchases are non-refundable.
Private channels: invite-only, end-to-end encrypted broadcasts. Owners and admins post announcements; followers read, receive notifications and can leave at any time. Channels are not searchable. Invite links expire after 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days, and can be revoked. Free accounts can own one channel with up to 50 subscribers and 250 MB of channel storage; Premium allows 5 channels, unlimited subscribers and 1 GB of channel storage per channel. If an owner or admin account is deleted, the channel is preserved and locked.
Invites now pay off: every friend who activates an account through your invite adds 7 days of Premium to your account.
Voice messages fixed: recordings now send and play reliably in direct and group chats.
Export controls: group admins can switch chat export off for the whole group, and everyone can opt out of being included in other people's exports.
Group deletion: group admins can now delete a whole group for everyone — memberships, messages and shared files go with it.
Storage limits: accounts can keep 500 MB of files they sent, 1 GB with Premium. The profile panel shows a usage bar and warns you when storage is running low.
Calls keep the app usable: a connected call shrinks to a slim bar at the top with the timer, mute and end call — the chat stays available, and tapping the bar reopens the full call screen.
Storage manager: "Manage storage" in the profile panel lists every file you uploaded, largest first, with sorting and a delete action that frees the space (the message carrying it is removed for everyone).
Storage guard: when your bucket is full — or the chosen file would not fit — attaching a file or recording a voice message is refused before anything is uploaded, with a notice that opens the storage manager.
Dark mode: pick Auto, Light or Dark under Appearance in the profile panel; Auto follows your device.
Status page history: server CPU and memory are sampled every 15 minutes in the background and stored in the database, so the load chart is consistent instead of changing whenever someone opens the page.
Unread badge on the tab: the favicon now shows the number of unread messages, so a background tab still tells you at a glance.
Faster repeat visits: versioned CSS and JavaScript are cached for a year by the browser — updates still arrive immediately because the version changes.
Usernames are at least 4 characters for new accounts (existing shorter names keep working and are found by exact search). On phones the call speaker toggle now actually routes audio to the loudspeaker; on desktop the dead button is gone.
Updates without interruption: code deploys now replace the app's workers one at a time (no dropped requests, no forced sign-outs), a health probe reports readiness, the session cap was raised so long-lived devices aren't pruned, and a message that hits a deploy blip retries once and says so if it still fails.
Remembered sessions: closing a tab or killing the Android app no longer signs you out. A session stays valid for 3 days of inactivity (up to 7 days in total), and the encrypted private key is remembered with a non-extractable device key instead of being kept in plain text.
Terms for global launch: a new Terms of Service sets clear rules against abuse and illegal activity, explains encrypted-content moderation, payments, copyright, sanctions and EU/US consumer rights. New accounts accept it at signup; existing accounts confirm it once in the app.
Blocked chats: when either side has blocked the other, the message box and the profile's "Send Message" button disappear, with an Unblock action right in the chat.
Files are compacted before they are encrypted: photos are downscaled and re-encoded to WebP, text-like and uncompressed files are gzipped, and voice notes record at a lower bitrate. Uploads and storage use drop accordingly — encryption is unchanged, the server still only ever sees ciphertext.
Video attachments: videos now play inline with a player and download as the original file; multi-megabyte attachments stream as raw binary and a stalled load offers Retry instead of hanging. Compacted documents are restored before download too, videos with a misleading browser MIME are no longer compacted as photos, and the Android picker accepts videos and documents instead of images only.
Fixes and polish: group rename and photo are admin-only, message requests arrive as one card per person, "Mark as read" in the conversation menu, forwarded voice notes look right, deleting a conversation no longer brings it back for the person who deleted it, the chat list updates the moment a message is sent or received, uploads show a live progress bar, authenticator sign-in no longer flashes a device-clock warning while a valid code is still being verified (Verify locks during the request, so a double click cannot fail with "session expired"), and voice calls keep their audio: candidate exchange no longer runs into the write rate limit, early candidates are buffered instead of dropped, and dropped signaling requests are retried.
1.5 — October 2026
Web · Android app unchanged
Two-factor authentication is now optional: skip it at signup and enable it any time from the app — a banner reminds you until you do. Still strongly recommended, still one tap.
Sign-up made friendlier: a clear "skip for now" path, a QR code that fits every screen (and a card that breathes on desktop), and a success step that reads in clear lines. The code check still explains a rejected code — clock drift, wrong entry.
One search for everything: people, groups and messages in a single panel — open it from the sidebar or with Ctrl/Cmd+K. Results appear as you type, with an "All chats / This chat" switch when you're in a conversation, and arrow keys plus Enter to move around.
Account activation tracking: the welcome note and invite credit now land the moment an account first becomes usable, whichever path you take.
Fixes: a wrong authenticator code during in-app setup no longer signs you out — it shows an inline error; accounts that skipped 2FA are now findable in search.
1.4 — October 2026
Web · Android app unchanged (versionCode 4)
Invite friends, track your reach: every account gets a permanent invite code and link. Sign-ups through your link are credited to you, and your count is shown in the account panel.
Premium: a badge next to your name in chats and profiles, plus a one-time free week — start it from the panel (top-left). No payment details, ever.
Announcements from Markero: a read-only channel with your welcome note and product news.
Smarter sign-up: your browser checks the authenticator code before sending and explains the exact problem — stale code, device clock drift or the wrong app entry. Codes tolerate ±60s of clock drift, a manual setup key is shown next to the QR, and an unfinished sign-up can be completed later by logging in.
Cleaner device list: sessions read as devices ("Chrome on macOS"), the list is capped, and old entries are pruned automatically.
Fix: accounts invited through a link could not be deleted — referral records are now removed with the account.
1.3 — September 2026
Android versionCode 4 · web rolling release
Change password from the account panel — your keys are re-wrapped client-side and other devices are signed out.
Group typing indicators with names, plus throttled typing signals for DMs.
Self-service authenticator reset: recover with your password and one recovery code if you lose your authenticator.
Day separators between message groups.
Redesigned UI: a consistent monochrome icon set, better alignment and spacing, photo-only media gallery.
Security hardening: TOTP verification bound to the password step, working session revocation, spoof-resistant rate limiting, orphaned encrypted files cleaned up.
Android: mixed-content hardening; signing credentials are no longer stored with the app code.
1.2 — July 2026
Android versionCode 3
Optimistic message sending (messages appear instantly while encrypting).
GIF search with a 24-hour server cache; stickers and reactions.
YouTube and link previews with clean titles.
Rich push notifications: group sender names, reply indicators.
Signed release build for the Play Store.
1.1 — June 2026
Web
Voice calls over WebRTC with per-user TURN credentials.
Voice messages, image thumbnails and document sharing.
Message search, export and pinned conversations.
Message requests, blocking and conversation mute/archive.
Group administration and @mentions.
1.0 — May 2026
Initial release
End-to-end encrypted messaging with PGP Curve25519, keys generated on your device.
Username-only registration — no email, no phone number.
TOTP two-factor authentication and recovery codes. At launch 2FA was mandatory; it is now optional and strongly recommended.
Direct messages, groups, encrypted file sharing and a zero-access server.