Starting a call
Open a chat and tap the call button, or start one from the Calls tab. Choose audio or video; you can turn the camera on and off during the call, and share your screen.If your microphone or camera isn’t available, the call still connects — you join muted or with the camera off, rather than failing to connect at all.
Incoming calls that actually ring
A call is only useful if you notice it. Bastion rings you like a real phone:1
On your phone
Incoming Bastion calls use the native system call screen on iOS and Android — they ring on the lock screen, before you’ve opened the app.
2
On web and desktop
A full-screen ringer with accept and decline does the same job in the browser and the desktop app.
3
Answer or decline
Accept to join the call; decline to send it away. If the caller cancels first, the ring dismisses itself.
What’s encrypted
Audio, video and screen sharing are encrypted end to end between participants, with a call key derived from the chat’s own encryption. The media server that carries the streams runs on your node, so calls stay on infrastructure you control — and if a device can’t establish end-to-end encryption for the call, Bastion won’t connect it rather than fall back to unencrypted media.On a self-hosted node, calls need the bundled media server to be running and reachable — see Self-hosting.