FireChat was a proprietary mobile app, developed by Open Garden, which used wireless mesh networking to enable smartphones to pass messages to each other peer-to-peer via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Apple's Multipeer, without an internet connection.

[6] This feature was added for the benefit of aid workers doing disaster relief and stemmed from a partnership with the city of Marikina.

[7] FireChat became popular in 2014 in Iraq following government restrictions on internet use,[8][9] and thereafter during the 2014 Hong Kong protests.

[14] In June 2014, Firechat's developers told Wired that "[p]eople need to understand that this is not a tool to communicate anything that would put them in a harmful situation if it were to be discovered by somebody who's hostile ...

"[15] By July 2015, the FireChat developers claimed to have added end-to-end encryption for its one-to-one private messages.