Three things every app we make has to be.
Beautiful
Twelve themes, six dark and six light, and you can build your own from four colours. Send buttons drawn in your theme's colours, and a screen-wide wave on its own clock. Your texting app is the screen you open most. It should be worth looking at.
Private
Lounge does not request the internet permission, so Android will not let it open a connection — check the permission list on the store before you install. No account, no analytics, nothing collected. The vault seals conversations out of Android's database entirely, and self-destruct clears what you would rather not keep.
Honest
You will know exactly what you are getting before you install it, including where SMS ends and RCS begins. No ads, no dark patterns, and nothing reading your messages to sell you something. The price is on the label and it stays there.
Built for people who want their texting app to be theirs.
The Vault
Conversations lifted out of Android's message database and sealed inside Lounge, behind their own passcode. Notifications say nothing. Screenshots are blocked. It locks the moment you leave.
Self-destruct
Per conversation, from five minutes to thirty days, or any length you type. Messages past that age clear themselves from this phone. The copy on the other person's phone is beyond reach, and Lounge says so.
Highlights
Keep a message. An address, a door code, something someone said. It gets a gradient edge and a star, and self-destruct never sweeps it.
Filters you write
Plain words or regular expressions, with a try-it box so you can see what a rule catches before you keep it. The filtered folder always says why a conversation is in it.
Twelve themes, or your own
Six dark, six light, and the page turns over rather than being tinted — bars, sheens, bevels and the send animations all follow. Or build your own: pick four colours and Lounge makes a theme from them.
Send it later
Write it now, send it at a time you pick. Long-press the send button, choose when, and it waits in the side panel until then — through a restart, and it tells you if it could not go.
Auto-reply
Answer for you while you are driving, working or asleep, with rules that keep it from firing at the wrong person or repeating itself into a corner.
Four ways to see it
Classic rows, glass cards, edge-lit, or ringed tiles — each shown as a working sample before you pick. Seven animated send buttons, every one drawn in your theme’s own colours, with a screen-wide wave on its own clock.
Everything you already expect
Group chats, photos, video and voice messages. Search across every conversation, drafts kept per thread, archive, and message text sized the way you like it.
It reads iPhone properly
iMessage features arrive on Android as literal text. Lounge turns that plumbing back into what it meant.
When someone reacts from an iPhone, Android is sent a message reading Loved “See you at 9”. Lounge puts the reaction back on the message it belongs to — including reactions on a photo, and ones they take back.
An iPhone sending confetti to an Android phone just appends (sent with Confetti) to the words. Lounge knows all thirteen and takes the note out of the bubble and the inbox.
The whole app turns over, not just the accent.
Bars, cards, bevels and the send animations all follow the one you pick. Six dark, six light — or build your own from four colours.
Seven ways to send.
Try one. Every animation is drawn in your theme’s own colours rather than a fixed neon, and the wave it throws crosses the whole screen, not just the button. Two come free; five are Plus.
Click any button to send · five of the seven are Lounge Plus
The other good texting apps, and where Lounge differs.
Textra and Pulse are the two serious third-party apps, and both do things well. Here is the whole picture, including the rows we lose.
| Lounge | Textra | Pulse SMS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ads in your inbox | None, ever | Until you pay to remove them | Yes |
| Advertising and tracking SDKs in the app | None | Eight | Seven |
| What it costs | $9.99 once, everything unlocked | Free with ads; $9.99 removes the ads | Free with ads; subscription for sync |
| Download size | 24 MB | 88 MB | 72 MB |
| Conversations sealed behind a passcode | Yes — encrypted, and lifted out of Android's database | No | A password screen over the same database |
| Messages that delete themselves | Yes, per conversation | No | No |
| Works with no account and no cloud | Yes | Yes | No — sync needs an account |
| Scheduled messages | Yes, and free | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop and web sync | No | No | Yes — on six platforms |
| RCS | No | No | No |
Lounge cannot do RCS. Neither can any other app but Google's.
Android does not give RCS to third-party texting apps — not to Lounge, not to Textra, not to any of them. That is a limit of the platform, not a feature we skipped, and we would rather you heard it here than found it out on a Tuesday.
What it means in practice: Lounge sends and receives SMS and MMS. If you live in group chats with iPhone users, keep Google Messages. If you want a texting app that is yours, read on.
Nine ninety-nine. Once.
Everything the free apps give away, Lounge gives away too. Plus buys the private end of it.
Lounge
FreeThe whole texting app. Not a trial.
- SMS, MMS, group chats and voice messages
- All twelve themes, your own themes, and four conversation styles
- Spam filters, blocking and the filtered folder
- Highlights and self-destruct
- Classic and Pulse send buttons, with their screen wave
Lounge Plus
One paymentNo account, no renewal, nothing to cancel.
Unlocked free for every beta tester, right now, until it reaches Google Play.
- Everything above
- The Vault — sealed conversations behind their own passcode
- Auto-reply — with rules, for when you are away
- Five more send buttons — Halo, Ripple, Aurora, Orbit and Marquee, each with its own screen-wide wave