Support

Last updated 26 September 2026

BSFChat is a small project. There is no support desk and no ticket queue — there is a person, an issue tracker, and an email address. This page says which one to use.

First: which server are you on?

BSFChat is self-hosted. The app is one thing; the server your messages actually live on is another, and it is very often run by somebody who is not us — a friend, a guild, a company, or you.

• Problems with the app — it crashes, a button does nothing, voice will not connect, the UI is broken on your phone — come to us. Use the links below.
• Problems with the people or the content on a server — someone is harassing you, a channel is full of junk, you want somebody removed — go to whoever runs that server. They are the only person who can act. We cannot moderate a server we do not operate, and in most cases we cannot even see it.
• Problems on chat.bsfchat.com — the public server we run — come to us, because there we are the admin.

You can see which server you are connected to in the app: it is the server name at the top of the server list.

Contact

We aim to reply to [email protected] within a few working days. Security reports get looked at faster.

Safety: blocking, reporting, and leaving

Every BSFChat client has blocking and reporting built in, on every server — including servers we have nothing to do with.

Where the controls are

All three are in the app; you do not need to email anyone to use them. Your settings are the user area at the bottom-left of the channel list on desktop (or Ctrl + ,), and the … menu in the header → Your profile on a phone.

Block someone

Click or tap a person's name or avatar — on any of their messages, or in the member list — to open their profile card, then press the lock button: “Block — you stop seeing their messages. They are not told.”

It takes effect immediately and it follows your account rather than your device: their messages, and their invitations, stop reaching you in every channel and every direct message, everywhere you sign in. They are not notified and cannot tell. Press the same button again to undo it, or open your settings → Blocked accounts and press Unblock.

Report a message or a user

Right-click a message on desktop, or long-press it on a phone, and choose Report message… — or Report user… to report the person rather than one message. The same thing is on the profile card. You can write a reason, and there is an also block them tick box, on by default.

Reports go to the administrators of the server the message was sent on, and to nobody else. Be clear-eyed about what a report is: it puts the message, and a copy of it kept in case the original is deleted, in front of a human administrator. By itself it does not remove the message, mute the sender, or tell the reported person anything. Block is the control with an immediate effect, which is exactly why the two are offered together.

Leave, or delete your account

Leaving a server is in that server's own menu. Deleting your account is in your settings, at the bottom, below Log out: Delete account. You will be asked to type your username, and your password, to confirm.

Please read what deletion does and does not do first. The short version: your sign-in is destroyed, your profile is blanked and you are removed from every channel — but messages you have already sent stay where you sent them, and your username can never be registered again. That is deliberate, and the privacy policy explains why.

One gap to know about: if you signed in with a BSFChat ID from id.bsfchat.com, deleting your account on a chat server does not delete that identity account — there is no button for it yet. Email [email protected] and ask us to remove it, and we will.

Common problems

"I cannot sign in"

Check the server address first — it is the most common cause. If you are signing in with a BSFChat identity account and it keeps bouncing, sign out completely (your settings → Log out) and add the server again; that resets the stored token, which is usually what has gone stale.

"Voice does not work"

Check that the app has microphone permission in your OS settings. If you can connect but nobody can hear you, check that you are not muted and that the right input device is selected in your settings → Voice.

Voice and camera video work on macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android. Screen sharing is not available on iPhone — iOS has no equivalent of the desktop screen picker, and the button is not shown there.

"I am not getting notifications on my iPhone"

You will not. The iOS app has no push notifications yet — it only shows you new messages while it is open. This is on the roadmap.

"Echo / people hear themselves"

On Mac and iPhone, BSFChat uses the system's voice-processing audio unit, which cancels echo, suppresses noise and rides the gain. It is on by default and can be turned off in your settings → Audio → Echo cancellation if it does something you do not want. On Android the phone's own communication-mode processing does the same job.

On Windows and Linux there is no echo cancellation. Use headphones there: an open speaker and an open microphone in the same room will feed back.

Running your own server

Setup instructions, the reference docker-compose.yml and the deployment notes are in github.com/BSFChat/server. Self-hosting questions are best asked as a GitHub issue rather than by email, so the answer helps the next person too.