Privacy
Short version: your call goes straight between the people in it. Effects run on your own device. Nothing is stored on a server, and there is no account.
Camera and microphone
Your camera and microphone are off until you turn them on. The home page never uses them. Before every call you see a preview page where you choose your camera and microphone and whether they are on, and nobody sees or hears you until you press Join. Next time, the preview page starts with the choices you made last time. Konvene needs a microphone to join, but you can stay muted.
Video and voice
Calls use WebRTC, so video and voice travel directly between the browsers in the room, encrypted. We don't run a media server, so we never receive or store your call.
Your microphone is cleaned up on your device before it's sent: your browser's echo and noise control by default, plus a small noise-removal model (RNNoise, served from this site) if you choose strong noise reduction. Your audio isn't sent anywhere to be processed. During a call, your browser also compares how loud your microphone is with how loud each person's audio is, to notice two devices in the same room (which causes echo) and suggest turning sound off on one. It only keeps the last few seconds of loudness numbers, in memory, and nothing about it is sent.
Screen sharing and chat
A screen you share and the chat messages you send travel the same way as video: directly to the other people in the call. Chat messages are not saved anywhere and disappear when you leave. Your browser asks you which screen, window or tab to share, and you can stop at any time.
Effects
Background blur, virtual backgrounds, looks, lighting, face touch-ups, makeup, face warps and expression effects are calculated in your browser using Google MediaPipe models that are downloaded from this site. They change the picture before it is sent. The face tracking finds points on your face to place effects; it does not recognise who you are. A background image you upload stays on your device.
Smart features
Pausing your video when you step away, keeping you in frame, fixing low light and the reminder when you talk while muted all work on your device, using the same face tracking and microphone level as the rest of the app. Nothing about them is sent anywhere.
Call links
A call link looks like konvene.example/abc-def-ghj. The website host sees which call code a browser opened, as it does for any web address, but it is never part of the call and cannot see or hear it.
Live captions
Captions are made on the devices in the call, never on a server. Konvene uses Chrome's on-device speech recognition and always tells it to stay on the device; if it can't, there are no captions rather than captions made elsewhere. The first time, Chrome downloads a language pack for this itself, once. When someone turns captions on, the browsers of the others in the call turn their own speech into text and send the words straight to the people who turned captions on. If someone's browser can't do that, the browser of the person who wants captions makes them from the audio it already receives. Captions aren't saved anywhere.
Passcodes and asking to join
Whoever starts a call can add a passcode. It is part of the link you copy, after the #, which browsers never send to any website. Your browser uses it to encrypt the handshake, so a browser without it cannot connect at all, and the relays below only ever see scrambled data.
A call can also ask before letting people in. Someone asking to join sends their name to the people in the call, straight from browser to browser. Until they are let in, the browsers in the call send them no video, voice, chat or names. This is kept by the browsers in the call, so for real protection use it together with a passcode.
How people find each other
To connect, browsers exchange a short handshake through public Nostr relays, and use public STUN servers (Google and Cloudflare) to find a direct route. These services, and the other people in the call, can see your IP address, as with any video call. They do not receive your video or voice.
Some networks (strict offices, hotels, some mobile carriers) block direct connections. If whoever runs this site has set up a relay (a TURN server, for example Cloudflare's), your call is passed through it on those networks only. The relay forwards your call still encrypted and cannot see or hear it. It can see your IP address. To get a short-lived relay password, your browser asks this site's /api/turn address when the page opens.
Recording
Anyone in a call can record it in their own browser. Everyone sees a "recording" badge with that person's name while it runs. The file is created on the recorder's device and is only saved if they choose to. In many countries you need everyone's consent to record a call, so please ask first.
What this site stores
Your browser remembers your name, your effect choices, which camera, microphone and speakers you picked and whether you had them on, in local storage on your device. For calls you start, it also remembers the call code, its passcode and whether it asks first, for a week, so you get straight back in. If you turn this device's sound off, that tab remembers it until you leave the call. No cookies, no analytics, no ads.
Open source
Konvene is open source under the GNU AGPL. You can read the code that makes every promise on this page at https://github.com/rakeshmenon/konvene, and run your own copy.
Who runs this site
This copy of Konvene is run by Rakesh Menon. Contact.
Last updated 31 October 2026. Back to Konvene