Xchat, the new DM feature for X, has begun to roll out to beta testers. Some X users who pay for subscription products on the platform report that they have access to Xchat, but reverse engineer Nima Owji has confirmed to TechCrunch that the new messaging system appears to be ready for shipment.
Xchat is intended to be a more robust version of X’s existing Direct Messages (DM) functionality. This is a holdover from Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition.
Some features rumored to be part of Xchat include group messages, end-to-end encryption, lost mode, ability to mark messages as unread, and file sharing. The message also appears to be protected behind a 4-digit passcode.
X announced Thursday that the new system is pausing work with encrypted DM functionality as it will deprecate the existing DM interface. Paid subscribers of X have access to a limited version of encrypted messaging for two years.
Over the years since he bought Twitter, Musk has spoken many times about his ambitions to create a signal-like messaging service built into X. If XChat is actually published, this news can represent Musk’s follow-through for that goal.