bzz

why bzz

Your keys, your history, your terminal.

/// identity

Native Nostr identity, in your OS keychain

No third-party account. Secret keys live in the operating-system credential store and never pass through argv or plain environment variables. Backups are password-encrypted NIP-49 ncryptsec files.

/// communities

Host-isolated communities

Each Buzz community stays isolated by host. Configure several, authenticate one active session, and switch without mixing state.

/// offline

Offline-first everything

Channel history, profiles, threads, unread markers, and drafts are cached locally. Read and draft on a plane; sync when you reconnect.

what you get

All of Buzz, at terminal speed.

/// sends

Acknowledged sends, honest failures

Durable ambiguous-outcome recovery with distinct pending, delivery-unknown, and rejected presentation. You always know what the relay actually accepted.

/// inbox

An Inbox that respects your attention

Mentions, relevant threads, workspace DMs, needs-action events, unread rows, and drafts — filterable, with explicit read/unread state. Nothing is silently marked read.

/// search

Unified local + relay search

Offline SQLite FTS5 plus authenticated NIP-50 prefix search across channels, DMs, people, and messages, with from:, in:, and date operators.

/// dms

Workspace DMs, honestly labeled

Buzz Desktop-compatible one-to-one and group DMs with owner-only hide state — and explicit labeling that they are not end-to-end encrypted.

/// media

Inline images, verified first

JPEG/PNG/GIF/WebP render through Kitty, Sixel, iTerm2, or a Unicode half-block fallback. Every blob is size, MIME, and SHA-256 verified before decode or display.

/// attachments

Safe uploads, sanitized by default

Paste files or images with Ctrl-V, pick with the OS chooser. Local images are bounded, orientation-corrected, and stripped of private metadata before upload.

/// navigation

Vim-style, leader-key driven

j/k to move, Space Space for the fuzzy switcher, i to write, ? for the generated keymap help. Mouse optional, semantic, and safely restored.

/// themes

60 built-in themes

Plus semantic theme.toml customization. This page's theme switcher uses the same palettes — try it in the nav.

/// reactions

Reactions, deletion, read state

Reaction toggles, own-message deletion, and encrypted cross-device read state, all from the keyboard.

security

Security is a feature, not a footnote.

Keychain-first secrets. OS credential store by default; encrypted-file backend prompts on the controlling terminal only.
NIP-49 encrypted backups. Created atomically with owner-only permissions; restore without changing identity or communities.
Scoped media fetching. Only descriptor-backed media on the active community origin is fetched; arbitrary Markdown URLs stay inert.
Short-lived Blossom auth. Content-addressed read authorizations, never sent to another origin; no redirects on main blob fetches.
No silent execution. Generic files are never auto-downloaded or executed. Copy to clipboard is explicit, via OSC 52.
Verifiable releases. SHA-256 checksums, CycloneDX SBOMs, and GitHub build-provenance attestations on every tagged release.

install

One binary. Pick your platform.

curl -fsSL https://getbzz.dev/install.sh | sh

Detects OS and architecture. Read it first if you prefer: install.sh (redirects to the latest signed GitHub release installer).

# Apple Silicon
curl -fsSL https://github.com/arpagon/bzz/releases/latest/download/bzz-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.xz | tar xJ
# Intel
curl -fsSL https://github.com/arpagon/bzz/releases/latest/download/bzz-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.xz | tar xJ

sudo mv bzz /usr/local/bin/

# x86_64
curl -fsSL https://github.com/arpagon/bzz/releases/latest/download/bzz-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz | tar xJ
# arm64
curl -fsSL https://github.com/arpagon/bzz/releases/latest/download/bzz-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz | tar xJ

sudo mv bzz /usr/local/bin/

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/arpagon/bzz/releases/latest/download/bzz-installer.ps1 | iex"

Or download bzz-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip from the latest release and add bzz.exe to your PATH.

brew install arpagon/tap/bzz

The formula (bzz.rb) is published with every release.

cargo install --git https://github.com/arpagon/bzz --locked

Builds locally with the pinned toolchain (rust-toolchain.toml).

/// verify

Verify what you run

Every release ships sha256.sum, a CycloneDX SBOM (bzz.cdx.xml), and GitHub build-provenance attestations. Verification steps live in docs/releasing.md.

/// first run

Then get connected

bzz identity new --label personal
bzz community add my-team \
  wss://buzz.example <identity-uuid>
bzz