Arattai Rolls Out End-to-End Encryption for Personal Chats, Group Encryption Coming Soon
Zoho’s India-built messaging platform Arattai has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for all one-on-one chats, giving users a major boost in privacy and control over their conversations. With this update, personal messages are encrypted directly on the user’s device, ensuring that only the sender and recipient can view them—similar to what platforms like WhatsApp and Signal already offer. Even Arattai itself will not have access to the content of these encrypted chats.
The security upgrade is now available on Android, iOS, and desktop versions of the app. Users simply need to install the latest update to activate the feature. In an announcement shared on X, the company confirmed that once users move to the required versions—v1.33.6 for Android, v1.17.23 for iOS, and v1.0.7 for desktop—their ongoing one-to-one chats will automatically transition into newly generated encrypted sessions.
To make the shift clear and user-friendly, Arattai will display a small shield icon beside the contact’s name in any encrypted conversation. This visual marker helps users instantly confirm that they are chatting with full E2EE protection.
Interestingly, Arattai has chosen a slightly different path for implementing encryption. Instead of enabling E2EE inside existing chat threads, the app creates brand-new encrypted chat windows. Older conversations that were previously unencrypted will be archived and locked as read-only. Zoho Founder Sridhar Vembu explained earlier that users “won’t be able to continue chatting in the previous thread once E2EE is active.” Clicking on an old chat simply redirects users to the new secure window. While this ensures strong encryption for all new messages, older conversations will remain unencrypted and accessible only in the archived section.
To make sure users don’t face sudden communication blocks, Arattai has also introduced a three-day grace period for those who haven’t updated their app yet. If either person in a chat is on an older version, both can continue messaging in the previous non-encrypted chat for up to 72 hours. The company recommends using this time to update and remind contacts to do the same. After the buffer period ends, the app will force an auto-upgrade for all users, and “at that point, end-to-end encryption will become a system-wide mandate,” Vembu confirmed.
While individual chats are fully protected starting today, group chats will soon receive the same level of security. Arattai says encrypted group messaging is actively being developed and should roll out within a few weeks, initially for groups of specific sizes.
Users have also been eagerly waiting for encrypted chat backups, a feature not yet available in the current build. Vembu noted that encrypted backup support is expected to launch within the next two weeks, enabling users to securely save their chat histories without compromising privacy.
Arattai says several additional upgrades are in the pipeline as the platform undergoes this major privacy-centric transformation, promising a more secure and user-friendly communication experience in the months ahead.