Your character
just got a phone.

Here is the honest version. Aetherphone is a Dalamud plugin, and Square Enix's terms prohibit all third-party tools, so you run it at your own discretion. In practice the risk for normal use is low: the XIVLauncher team reports no known bans for simply using Dalamud plugins, and Aetherphone gives no gameplay advantage and does not automate combat. What Square Enix actually acts on is public promotion and genuinely harmful tools, so the only real rule is the community's: don't show it off in game.

That worry is fair, and it points at the right thing. What draws attention is promotion, not quiet use. Square Enix's notice singles out public statements that promote third-party tools, and past enforcement has followed visibility and genuinely harmful tools, not people playing with a plugin privately. So we keep Aetherphone low key: no in-game advertising, no paid promotion, no pretending it is official. Enjoy it, just don't wave it around.

No. To everyone else on the network you are only your handle and your region. Your character name and home world are never shown to other players, and there is no way through the app to reach your character in game. Signing in is simply how the network confirms who you are: you prove you own a character through XIVAuth, a one-time Lodestone code or, on the Chinese client, a Rising Stones code, so your account is tied to your character for you, never exposed to anyone else. And unlike the tools that caused stalking scares, Aetherphone never tracks other players or collects their accounts.

Because you can read every line of it. The whole client is on GitHub under the AGPL license, so nothing about what it does is hidden. It installs like any Dalamud plugin, through XIVLauncher, and it never asks for your Square Enix password: you sign in by proving you own your Lodestone character. Don't take our word for anything on this page. Read the code.

No. Aetherphone is built by one person who does this for a living: a software engineer with eight years in the industry, most of it in game development, who owns the architecture, writes the code, and tests and maintains it. AI is part of the toolchain, the way it is for practically all software today, but it assists the work, it does not drive it. This is engineered, not prompted, and the whole client is open source.

It is free. All of it. No paid tiers, no premium unlocks, no ads. You can back the project on Patreon if you want to, and that is a donation, not a purchase: it unlocks nothing but cosmetic recognition, a badge, an avatar frame and a name effect that lapse when the membership ends. Every app, every capability and every part of Velvet is available to everyone at no cost, and it always will be. Aetherphone is a labor of love, released under the AGPL.

Your private conversations in ChocoChat and Velvet, the texts, the photos, the voice notes and the calls, are end-to-end encrypted. They are locked on your device before they leave it, and only the phones in the conversation hold the keys, so on our side they are ciphertext: who and when, never what. Public things are public by nature. Posts on Chirper and Aethergram and your profile are visible to the network, and to us, because a feed everyone can see and moderate cannot also be secret.

To confirm you own your character, sign-up stores your Lodestone character name, home world and Lodestone ID, and hands you a handle and a phone number. No email, no password, no real-life information. And you are never locked in: Settings has a delete option that wipes everything tied to you, your posts, photos, messages, contacts, number and profile, in a single action, permanently.

Very little, and nowhere near you. Aetherphone collects no analytics and no telemetry: it does not track what you tap, how long you play, or anything about your session. To confirm you own your character, sign-up keeps only your Lodestone character name, home world and Lodestone ID, and you can wipe all of it from Settings whenever you like. Your chats and calls in ChocoChat and Velvet are end-to-end encrypted, so not even our servers can read them. And there is no AI touching any of it: nothing you post, send or type is fed to an AI service, and no content is handed to a third party to train or run a model. AI only helps the developer build the software, the way it does for most software today, and it never sees your data.

No. Messages and calls travel by phone number, and a number only reaches you if you handed it out in game, like a calling card. Nobody can cold-message or call you, in ChocoChat or in Velvet, without a mutual connection first. You can be found and followed on the public feeds, the way any social app works, but a follow does not open your inbox. Mute or block ends it either way.

The rules are short and absolute: no politics, no real life, no harassment, hate or violence. Every post and picture has a report button, and real moderators review what gets reported. Anything over the line is removed, the author is told which rule they broke, and accounts that keep breaking the rules are removed for good.

For a post, it goes into the moderation queue with your reason attached, and a real moderator takes a look. For a private message, you share that message and up to five before it, and nothing else. Every message carries a cryptographic seal tied to its true sender, so a report cannot be faked and a screenshot cannot be doctored: moderators can prove who sent what, then remove it and act on the account behind it.

Velvet is opt-in from the very first tap and sits behind an 18+ gate, and it is built so nothing reaches you uninvited. No message or photo arrives until you and the other person both choose to connect, so there are no cold DMs. You can report anything, sexual content involving child-like characters is banned outright with no exceptions and means an immediate, permanent ban, and your Velvet messages are end-to-end encrypted like the rest of the phone.

On your machine. The Camera saves to a photo library on your own computer, and a shot only leaves it if you choose to post or send it. Nothing is uploaded in the background.

No. It does not modify a single game file and it will not play the game for you: no combat automation, no botting, no advantage of any kind. It reads game information the way many quality-of-life plugins do, and draws its own window over the game. The only things it ever sends into the game are the chat messages you type yourself in the Linkpearl app, and, if you switch it on, a small idle animation.

FINAL FANTASY XIV on PC, launched through XIVLauncher with Dalamud enabled. Nothing else, and no other plugins required.

The social network behind the phone: Chirper, Aethergram, Velvet, ChocoChat and calls, Polls, Muster meetups, the Yellow Pages, community radio, MogCast watch parties, online games, Aether Coin and Gamba. You sign in once, with your Lodestone character, XIVAuth or Rising Stones, and one identity follows you across every character and world you play. To everyone else, you are just your handle and your region.

No. Gamba runs on Aether Coin, a cosmetic token you earn by checking in, playing the arcade and being part of the network. It cannot be bought, sold, transferred or cashed out, and it has no monetary value, so no money is ever wagered, won or lost. The coin only buys cosmetics in the shop: avatar frames and badges. Every casino round is provably fair and can be verified from the phone, and trading coin or casino outcomes for real money or gil is a bannable offense.

Yes. The phone detects the Chinese client, signs you in through your Rising Stones profile instead of the Lodestone, and hides the three apps that depend on services unreachable from that region: Music, MogCast and News. Everything else works the same, feeds, chats, Velvet, Gamba and Aether Coin included.