FAQ

Is this an official DeepSeek app? No. It is an unofficial, community-built companion. The DeepSeek Harness and its brand belong to their respective owners; this app is an independent remote for it, MIT licensed.

Do I need an internet connection? No. The app talks to a harness on your own network. The single exception is an optional check to GitHub for a newer release, which you can turn off at Settings → About → Check for updates.

Does it use my DeepSeek API key or account? It has no notion of either. Models, keys and everything else belong to the harness on your computer; the app just drives it.

Why is there no login or pairing code? Because the harness has no authentication to log into. Its only gate is a Host-header trust fence. This is a real limitation with real consequences — read Security before opening a port.

Is it safe to use on any Wi-Fi? No. On a network you do not trust, do not enable LAN mode at all. Use adb reverse over USB, which keeps the harness on loopback. See Getting Started.

Why does it allow plain HTTP? The harness serves plain HTTP with no TLS, so a client that refused cleartext could not talk to it.

Does it store my conversations on the phone? No. Transcripts live in memory and are re-fetched from the harness on connect. Only host addresses and your preferences are persisted, in app-private storage.

Is there an iOS version? No. This is a Kotlin + Jetpack Compose Android app; nothing here is cross-platform.

Is it on Google Play? No — install the APK from Releases. Each release also publishes SHA256SUMS.txt.

Can the app update itself? No. It can only tell you a newer release exists and link to the page; installing is yours to do.

Which Android versions are supported? Android 8.0 and newer (minSdk 26).

Which harness versions work? The baseline is 0.1.0-rc.5. A different version shows a non-blocking warning and generally still works, because unknown events and tool cards degrade to generic entries. See Compatibility.

Does it work on an emulator? Yes. adb reverse tcp:3080 tcp:3080, then connect to 127.0.0.1:3080.

Why does Scan network find nothing? Most often the harness is still bound to 127.0.0.1 (see LAN Mode), the computer's firewall is dropping the port, or the phone is on a different subnet than the computer — a guest or IoT SSID will do that. The sweep only walks the phone's own /24. Walk through Troubleshooting.

A harness showed up as "Not trusted". What now? It is running and reachable but refuses this device's Host header. Connect by IP address, or restart it with dsh web --trusted-host <name>.

Why are Settings read-only? Settings, credentials, model discovery, host file pickers and preset authoring are loopback-only by harness design and answer 403 to a network client. Change them on the computer, or connect over adb reverse.

Can I run several harnesses? Yes. Each host:port is remembered separately, along with which session you last had open there.

Can I use it on more than one phone at once? Yes — the harness accepts multiple clients, including its own web GUI at the same time.

Does it drain the battery? Only while it holds a connection in the background, which is opt-in (Settings → Notifications → Keep connected in background). With it off, the app does nothing when you are not in it — and receives nothing either. See Notifications.

Search only matches titles. Is that broken? No. Full-text content search is a harness-side service that is off in the shipped configuration, so the app matches session titles and workspace names locally, exactly as the harness's own sidebar does.

Can I change the language and theme? Yes: Settings → General. Eleven languages, RTL aware, plus Light / Dark / System.

Where do I report a bug? Issues — include the app version and protocol baseline from Settings → About, the harness version, and the exact message you saw. Security problems go privately to the maintainers instead.

Can I contribute? Yes — For Developers and CONTRIBUTING.md.