# Chat encryption: what it was, where it went

From 1.19.2-v1.13.0 to v2.11.0 the mod could encrypt your chat with a shared secret key. It was removed in 1.21.5-v2.12.0 — unmaintained and buggy, and dedicated mods now do the job better.

The idea was simple: pick an algorithm (AES by default), generate a key or derive one from a passphrase, share it with the people you trust, and your messages travel as ciphertext. To everyone without the key — including the server console — a message looked like `gwZnkzO5aBmUcY0BpIz/ApCNNkzp7g==`. To your friends with the key, plain text with a lock icon. Reporting gibberish accomplishes nothing, which was the point.

You configured it by right-clicking the padlock button in the chat screen, and it could encrypt public chat or just command channels like `/msg`, with keys shared out-of-band. [Aizistral's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7RzNP32k-s) walks through the whole thing, including whether it was worth using at all.

Where that leaves you today: builds through 1.21.4 still ship the feature, and the maintained [1.20.1 line](/download/1.20.1/) is the comfortable way to have it. On current versions, the wiki's alternatives list points to dedicated tools — SecureChat for encrypted text on modern Fabric, Simple Voice Chat and Plasmo Voice for AES-encrypted voice, Message Encryption for private messages, or simply moving sensitive talk to Discord, where Minecraft's report system can't follow. The full list with versions lives in [the wiki's alternatives section](https://github.com/Aizistral-Studios/No-Chat-Reports/wiki/To-Encrypt-or-Not-to-Encrypt#alternatives).

Condensed from the official wiki's [To Encrypt or Not to Encrypt](https://github.com/Aizistral-Studios/No-Chat-Reports/wiki/To-Encrypt-or-Not-to-Encrypt) article, which stays the canonical reference.

The padlock's tooltip in an encryption-era build.

- [ Get the 1.20.1 build ](/download/1.20.1/)

The maintained line that still ships encryption.

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Canonical: https://nochatreports.com/encryption/
Catalog: https://nochatreports.com/api/mod/catalog
Download a row: `GET /api/mod/download?versionId={id}&loader={loader}`
Full catalog UI: https://nochatreports.com/download/