New messenger app sends texts by virtual pigeon and sometimes the bird just dies

A messaging app has come up with maybe the least efficient alternative to WhatsApp imaginable: sending your texts by virtual carrier pigeon.

Called Carrier Pidge, the iOS app deliberately makes messages travel between users rather than delivering them instantly. The farther away your friend is, the longer you’ll be waiting for a reply.

Messages move at 110 mph, with delivery times calculated using the real GPS distance between the sender and recipient.

That means something sent across town could arrive within seconds, sending a message across the US would take hours, and it would take days to reach out to someone on the other side of the world.

Unlike ancient times, though, you’re not left in the dark about your pigeon’s journey, as Carrier Pidge lets you watch the bird make its way across a map in real time.

However, there’s no guarantee your carefully written message will ever reach its target.

Each pigeon has a 0.2% chance of getting lost during its journey and dying before it reaches the destination, while its flying speed can vary by 25%. If the bird doesn’t make it, neither does the message.

Spent 3 weeks building a texting app slower than email. Messages fly at pigeon speed — LA to NYC takes 22 hrs. Sometimes the bird dies & the message isn’t delivered.

It took around three weeks for developer Noah Iarrobino to put together, and he’s been fairly open about the app’s intentionally “pointless” premise. In a Reddit post about creating the app, he admitted it has “genuinely no practical use” and said he built it because he couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

The whole app leans into the carrier pigeon theme. Friends added though Carrier Pidge become your “flock,” friend requests arrive as incoming pigeons, and all of your conversations are stored in “the aviary.”

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This is very similar to another app, named Roost, which also sends messages in real time using virtual birds. Both launched around April 2026, and despite some concerns they had copied each other, Iarrobino insists they simply thought of the concept.

“Some of my friends actually sent me a reel about roost thinking they ripped me off,” he wrote on X. “I spoke with the creator and I guess we both had similar ideas.”

For more clever apps, this one lets you play PS5 games on Steam Deck, while this running app turns your neighbourhood into a game of Civilization 7.