OSHI for Meshtastic Users

OSHI is a free, open-source, end-to-end encrypted messenger for iOS and Android that uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mesh networking to send messages without Internet or cellular service. If you already run Meshtastic nodes, this page tells you precisely what OSHI adds beside them, what its LoRa node is (a board running Meshtastic 2.x firmware), and what is not interoperable, so you do not buy or promise anything that does not exist.

The short version

• OSHI is a phone-first mesh messenger: phones talk directly over Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi Direct, with no radio, and use the Internet or Tor when available.
• OSHI's optional LoRa node is a board running Meshtastic 2.x firmware, flashed with the official Meshtastic web flasher and paired to OSHI over Meshtastic's published Bluetooth service. The Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3 is verified; four other boards are listed as compatible on paper and untested.
• Interoperability with your Meshtastic mesh is not documented. Nothing on oshi-messenger.com or in the OSHI repository says that an OSHI message appears in a Meshtastic channel or that Meshtastic messages appear in OSHI. Treat the OSHI node as OSHI's, not as a member of your mesh, until the project documents otherwise.
• The App Store notes for OSHI 1.0.39 say LoRa message transmission is being completed for the next update, and the listing states that messages bridged to LoRa radios are not encrypted by that link.

What you already have, and what you do not

A Meshtastic network gives you kilometres per hop, unattended solar repeaters, position sharing and a community that has mapped half the planet. What it does not give you is the people who will never carry a radio. Your partner, your kids, the rest of the hiking club, the neighbours after the storm: they have phones. Meshtastic's app is a keyboard for a radio; without the radio it does nothing. OSHI is the opposite — the phones are the network — and that is the gap it fills beside your nodes, not instead of them.

Side by side

Sources: meshtastic.org docs (encryption, LoRa configuration, software), oshi-messenger.com/lora/ (nodes.json updated 2026-08-03), OSHI App Store listing v1.0.39, oshi-messenger.com/compare/oshi-vs-meshtastic.

Three ways to run them together today

1. Radio backbone, phone edges

Keep Meshtastic for the long links between people who carry radios. Put OSHI on every phone in each cluster: the base camp, the family at home, the crowd at the event. Within a cluster, OSHI carries photos, voice notes and live location that LoRa never could. Between clusters, the radio carriers relay by hand — read on Meshtastic, retype in OSHI — which is exactly what a Meshtastic-only group does for non-radio members already, only now the non-radio members are meshed among themselves instead of isolated.

2. One spare board becomes an OSHI node

If you have a Heltec V3 in a drawer, it is already the board OSHI develops against. Flash Meshtastic 2.x with the official web flasher (or leave it as it is), power it on, open OSHI and press Connect. Set the region at first pairing. From then on OSHI treats the node as a range extender for text. Whether that node exchanges traffic with your existing Meshtastic channels is not documented, so assume it does not, and keep the node's region and channel settings from interfering with your main mesh.

3. Same phone, both apps

Nothing stops the Meshtastic app and OSHI from living on one phone. The Meshtastic app owns the Bluetooth link to your Meshtastic radio; OSHI owns the Bluetooth link to its own node and to other OSHI phones. Bluetooth handles several connections at once, but if you pair one board to both apps you are inviting trouble — give OSHI its own board.

What to expect from OSHI's node roadmap

The LoRa nodes page states three things and no more: the app talks to nodes through a firmware-neutral contract; OSHI firmware is planned, reserved as an adapter rather than a rewrite; a one-click OSHI flasher is being built, and until it ships you flash Meshtastic with its official web flasher and a node you flash now keeps working when OSHI firmware arrives. Two boards have firmware directories on the site (Heltec V3 and T3-S3), which is a sign of work in progress, not a released product. If you want to know whether OSHI-to-Meshtastic channel bridging is coming, ask on the project's GitHub — no page promises it, and this one will not either.

Things OSHI will not do for a Meshtastic user

• It will not join your channels, show your node map, or read your telemetry.
• It will not flash MeshCore or RNode firmware or talk to nodes running them.
• It will not encrypt the LoRa air link; between OSHI phones the Double Ratchet applies, over the air whatever the node firmware does applies.
• It will not run unattended: every OSHI relay is a phone with the app open.

For the full pairwise comparison see OSHI vs Meshtastic; for the wider field, LoRa messengers compared.

Frequently asked questions