Fliporium

Docs

Everything you need to know, and not a word more than that.

On this page

Install & first run

There's nothing to install. Download fliporium.exe, put it somewhere — your Desktop, a folder you like, a USB stick — and double-click it.

The first time you run it:

Fliporium runs on Windows 10 and 11. It uses the same WebView2 runtime that ships with the system, so there's nothing extra to install.

Vocabulary

Fliporium uses a small set of words to describe small things. Don't worry, nothing is gatekept by it — the words just make conversations easier.

The Floor
The home view. The list of people and booths visible to you, plus your composer at the bottom.
Marquee
The top strip. Brand on the left, your own info and Backstage on the right.
Booth
A small group room. You pick who's in it. Has its own shared notepad and watch-party slot.
Flip
To send a file. “Flip me that picture” = drag-and-drop or use the flip button.
Catch
To receive a flipped file. The file lands in your fliporium-data/inbox/ folder; click the file in chat to open it.
Showtime
A synchronized watch-party inside a booth. Whoever started it is the leader; everyone else syncs to their play/pause.
Backstage
Your settings drawer. Theme, sounds, twin pairing, invites, danger zone.
Twin
Another of your own devices, paired so 1:1 chats stay in sync across both.

Invite a friend

Inviting someone is a one-time thing per friend. Once they're on your tailnet, they show up on your Floor and stay there.

Step 1 — generate the invite

  1. Open Backstage (top-right of the app) → Invite a friend.
  2. Paste a fresh Headscale pre-auth key in the input. (You'll have this if you set up the control server yourself, or someone running the tailnet will give it to you.)
  3. Click Generate.

Step 2 — pick how to send it

The Generate button gives you three equivalent ways to pass the invite to your friend. Use whichever fits the situation:

QR code
Best when you're in the same room. Friend points a phone camera at your screen, taps the link, and gets a one-click copy of the key.
Copy link
Best for sending in chat or email. The link looks like https://fliporium.com/join#k=hskey-…. Anyone who opens it lands on a page that walks them through downloading and pasting the key. (The key lives in the URL fragment — the # bit — so the website's server never sees it.)
Copy invite text
Best for sending the whole instruction at once. The text already says “Download here, then paste this key” — your friend doesn't have to read separate messages.

Step 3 — what your friend does

Whichever method you used, your friend ends up with the pre-auth key. On their side:

  1. They download fliporium.exe from fliporium.com (or via the link you sent).
  2. They run it. On the very first launch, a small Welcome to Fliporium window appears and asks for their invite key.
  3. They paste the key, click Join the tailnet, and within a few seconds they show up on your Floor.

From then on, that device remembers itself. They never need an invite key again on that machine.

Pre-auth keys grant tailnet access. Don't paste one into a screenshot, a public chat, or a video stream. If the key is reusable, also rotate it after the friend has joined.

Chatting one-to-one

Click a name on the Floor to open a 1:1 conversation. Type at the bottom and press Enter to send.

Markdown works

On any message, hover to reveal a small toolbar

Booths

A booth is a group chat for a small set of people. Click + next to Booths on the Floor, name it, pick members, and you're in.

Each booth has:

Inviting a new member to an existing booth: open the booth, type /invite hostname. They'll get a notification and appear in the booth's member list.

Flipping files

Drag any file from your file explorer onto an open conversation. That's it. The file is transmitted directly between devices, chunked over the encrypted tailnet, and lands on the other person's disk.

Showtime (watch together)

Inside a booth, flip a video file. Once it lands on everyone's disk, click Start Showtime at the top of the booth. A video player appears for everyone.

Twin mode (same person, two devices)

If you use Fliporium on, say, your laptop and your desktop, you can pair them as twins. Twinned devices automatically sync 1:1 chat history and flipped files between themselves, so it doesn't matter which one you sit down at.

  1. On device A, open Backstage → Twin Mode, type the hostname of device B, save.
  2. Do the mirror on device B (twin to device A).
  3. From then on, anything you send or receive on one is replayed to the other.

Hit Ctrl + K from anywhere in the app to open the search panel. Type at least two characters; Fliporium full-text searches every message you've ever sent or received, across every peer and every booth, and ranks results by relevance. Click a result to jump to that message in context.

Backstage (settings)

Theme
Dark (default) or Light. Picks up your OS preference on first run.
Sounds
A short chime when a message arrives in a chat that isn't currently focused.
Twin Mode
Pair another of your devices. See above.
Invite a friend
Generate a QR code from a pre-auth key.
Help
Replay the Welcome tour anytime.
Danger zone — Burn Everything
Type burn everything and confirm to wipe this device's identity, chat history, flipped files, and settings. Other peers' copies are untouched. There is no undo.

What we can & can't see

What we can see, because we run the tailnet's control server:

What we cannot see, ever:

Everything in the “cannot see” list is end-to-end encrypted by WireGuard between your devices. It doesn't route through our server. We couldn't read it even if we wanted to. There is more in our full Privacy statement.

Troubleshooting

Fliporium opens but says “starting…” forever

The app couldn't reach the Headscale control server. Check your internet. Look in fliporium-data/fliporium.log next to the .exe — the last few lines usually say why.

Someone is on my Floor but their dot is grey

They're known to the tailnet but offline right now. As soon as they open their Fliporium and connect, the dot will turn green.

I dragged a file onto a peer and nothing happened

Make sure they're online (green dot). Files only flip between connected peers. If they're offline, the flip will sit queued and complete when they reconnect.

I want to start fresh on this machine

Backstage → Danger zone → Burn Everything. Or close the app and delete the fliporium-data folder.

FAQ

Is this open source?

The source lives in a private repository today. If there's interest, we'll open it.

Does Fliporium work on macOS or Linux?

Not yet. Windows is the v1 platform. The underlying networking is cross-platform, so other targets are technically possible.

Does it work on phones?

Not yet. A mobile companion is a longer-term thought.

What happens if the Headscale server goes offline?

Existing peers stay connected to each other (they've already exchanged keys). New peers won't be able to join until it's back. Routine introductions also pause. The control server's job is matchmaking, not traffic.

Can two Fliporium users on the same Wi-Fi chat without the internet?

Only if they've already paired through the control server at some point. After that initial handshake, two peers on the same LAN talk directly over the LAN, no internet hop required.

Can I run my own Headscale and use my own Fliporium?

Yes. Fliporium is designed around a small, self-hostable control server. If you want to run your own friends-and-family deployment, get in touch.