Social network X announced on Thursday that it is temporarily suspending its encrypted direct messaging feature to make unspecified improvements.
According to a statement from the company’s engineering team, users will retain access to their existing encrypted conversations but will not be able to send new encrypted messages until further notice. The company has not provided a timeline for when the feature will return.
The pause comes amid broader efforts by X—a key part of Elon Musk’s ambitious plan to revamp Twitter—to expand direct messaging capabilities and compete with established secure-messaging platforms like Signal. Musk introduced encrypted DMs in 2023, initially only available to verified users, though the feature faced significant limitations. At the time of its rollout, encrypted messaging did not support group chats or images and videos, could not be synced to new devices, and offered no protection against man-in-the-middle attacks.
X has not yet clarified what improvements it intends to implement during the downtime or when encrypted DMs may become available again.
