Rune Scribe
iOS & macOS App · Open Beta
Rune Scribe
ᚱᚢᚦ ᛋᚲᚑᚡ
Encrypt a message, wear it as Norse runes, and share it anywhere. A private, on-device encrypted-messaging app for macOS and iOS. Type a message and Rune Scribe seals it with AES-256-GCM, then renders the ciphertext as a string of runes you can send by iMessage, link, QR, or file. Hand a friend your cipher and they can read it; without it, the runes are just runes.
Real encryption, runic skin
Rune Scribe seals every message with modern authenticated encryption, then dresses the ciphertext as runes for the journey. The security is the key; the runes are a reversible costume. Everything happens on your device — no servers, no accounts, no tracking.
Encrypt, then encode
Each message is sealed with AES-256-GCM under a 256-bit key, and only then rendered as runes. The runes are a faithful, reversible skin — they carry no secrecy of their own.
A library of ciphers
A cipher is the key to one conversation. Keep several labelled ciphers — one per friend or purpose — and switch the active one any time. Import people from Apple Contacts and each gets its own fresh key.
Send & share, any way
Send a message straight through iMessage or the system Share sheet, or hand a friend the cipher by tappable link, QR code, or decoder file. They read your runes in one tap.
Features
Authenticated encryption
Every message is sealed with AES-256-GCM (Apple’s CryptoKit) under a 256-bit key, with a fresh random nonce each time — so encrypting the same words twice never produces the same runes.
Send over iMessage & Share
Encode a message and send it straight through Messages (iOS) or the system Share sheet (both platforms). The key rides along on the first message to a contact, so your friend reads it with one tap — then taps Reply.
Contacts & per-contact keys
Import people from Apple Contacts; each imported contact gets its own fresh cipher automatically. Recipients are filed by display name only — no phone number or email ever travels in a message.
Share a cipher three ways
Hand over a cipher by a tap-to-import runescribe:// link, a QR code, or a portable decoder file — the file even carries the rune font, so the glyphs render perfectly on your friend’s device.
Optional app lock
A 4-digit PIN gates the app on launch and on return from the background. It is never stored — only a salted PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 hash in the Keychain — and repeated wrong guesses trigger an escalating lockout.
A crafted Norse interface
Your text inscribes itself in place, rune by rune, over a Metal-rendered Norse background, with a bundled runic font and a skippable cold-launch intro — one cohesive design, native on both macOS and iOS.
Encrypt-then-encode
Composing a message runs three steps. Seal: the plaintext is encrypted with AES-256-GCM — a fresh 12-byte nonce, the ciphertext, and a 16-byte authentication tag. Frame: a version byte is prepended; no key identifier is stored, so the message never announces which key opens it. Encode: the envelope bytes are turned into runes with base-32 over a fixed 32-rune alphabet (U+16A0–U+16BF, core Elder Futhark). Reading reverses each step. Because AES-GCM is authenticated, a wrong key — or a single altered rune — makes decryption fail outright; it never returns garbled-but-plausible text.
AES‑256
GCM authenticated encryption
256‑bit
key per conversation
32
Elder Futhark runes (base-32)
0
servers, accounts, or trackers
Anyone can turn the runes back into bytes — the alphabet and the base-32 scheme are public. But those bytes are an encrypted envelope: without the 256-bit key they stay sealed. Guard the key, not the runes. Because the encryption works on raw bytes, any message round-trips exactly — emoji, accents, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, newlines, the lot.
How a friend reads your message
1 · Encode
Type your message and press Rune Scribe. It is sealed with AES-256-GCM and inscribed in place as a line of runes.
2 · Send
Send via iMessage or Share. The runes go as plain text in the bubble; a Universal Link quietly carries the sealed envelope.
3 · Key, once
The first message to a contact embeds the key, so your friend taps once and it imports automatically. Later messages carry only the sealed envelope.
4 · Read & reply
Their app opens the envelope by trying each cipher — only the right key works — files it under your name, and offers Reply.
Prefer to hand the cipher over yourself? Share it as a link, a QR code, or a decoder file — every channel funnels through one validated path with a one-tap import-confirm, so a shared cipher is never added silently.
A shared cipher — link, QR, or file — is the key: anyone who has it can read and write your runes. Share it only with people you trust, use different ciphers for different people, and don’t post it publicly.
Private by default, on your device
Real, authenticated encryption
AES-256-GCM with a fresh nonce per message; the GCM tag covers both the key and the contents, so a wrong key or any tampering makes decryption fail rather than return altered text.
Stored safely, on-device
No servers, accounts, or network calls. Your whole cipher library and your contacts are AES-256-GCM encrypted under a Keychain key (device-only, never iCloud-synced), and the PIN is kept only as a PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 hash.
Honest scope
The encryption is real and modern, but Rune Scribe is not a vetted secure messenger — no forward secrecy, no server-side identity verification, and keys are exchanged manually, peer to peer. A personal-privacy tool with a Norse aesthetic.
Carve your first message
Rune Scribe is a universal app for macOS 15+ and iOS 17+, now open to testers.
Now in open beta via Apple TestFlight — the badge opens TestFlight to install the beta.
Rune Scribe is one of my Raven Forge projects, built by me, James Daley. App Store publication may appear under my legal name, James Daley.