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NtfyBridge is more than just sending Jeedom alerts to your phone. It also includes Family Chat, a private messaging app hosted directly on your installation. No third-party account, no data leaving your home.

What is Family Chat?

Family Chat is a PWA (Progressive Web App) built into NtfyBridge. It installs on your phone's home screen like a real app, but runs in the browser — no App Store or Google Play involved.

It's designed for communication within a household or a small group: family, flatmates, a team. The core idea is to centralise home-related exchanges in a dedicated space, entirely under your control.

Features

Discussion channels

Family Chat is organised into themed channels. For example:

  • #home — dialogue with home automation (commands, states, confirmations)
  • #alerts — Jeedom notifications (motion, sensors, errors)
  • #family — free messaging between household members

Each member can subscribe to the channels that matter to them and receive per-channel push notifications — handy if you don't want to be disturbed by technical alerts.

Push notifications

Push notifications work without the official ntfy app. Family Chat manages its own push subscriptions via the browser. Each channel can be enabled or disabled independently in the app settings.

File and photo sharing

Family Chat supports sending photos and files from a phone or PC. Drag-and-drop from a computer, camera from mobile — files are hosted on your NtfyBridge server, not on a third-party cloud.

Home automation integration

The #home channel is bidirectional with Jeedom. NtfyBridge's reply rules and action rules apply to Family Chat messages too:

  • Type living room light → Jeedom replies with the light state
  • Type close shutters → Jeedom asks for confirmation then runs the command
  • Automatic alerts (detection, reminders, reports) arrive in the dedicated channel

Installation in 5 minutes

Family Chat is included in NtfyBridge with nothing extra to install. Once the server is configured and exposed (via Tailscale or reverse proxy):

On iOS:

  1. Open the Family Chat URL in Safari
  2. Share menu → "Add to Home Screen"
  3. Sign in with your NtfyBridge credentials

On Android:

  1. Open the URL in Chrome
  2. Menu → "Add to Home Screen"
  3. Sign in

On PC/Mac:

  1. Open the URL in Chrome or Edge
  2. Install icon in the address bar (if available)
  3. Or use directly in the browser

Why not WhatsApp or Signal?

The question is legitimate. Family Chat doesn't claim to replace a mainstream messenger for all communications. Its advantage is co-location with home automation:

  • Jeedom alerts arrive directly in the same thread as family messages
  • Home automation commands happen from the same interface as messages
  • All data stays on your server — message history, photos, files
  • No external account to create or maintain

For a household already using Jeedom, Family Chat avoids juggling a notification app (ntfy), a remote control tool, and a separate family messenger.

With Tailscale: fully private access

Like ntfy notifications, Family Chat can be exposed exclusively via Tailscale. The app URL is then only accessible from devices on your tailnet — phones, tablets, PCs — never going through the internet.

This is the recommended setup to keep a family messenger entirely private and out of reach from the outside world.

Going further