Sail is local social media

You don't need
big tech.

Mark Zuckerberg is a strange lizard man who lives in California. You live in Cape Town.

You don't need to sell your soul to an imperial intelligence gathering machine just to share your picture of Bakoven with friends.

Sail app screenshot
Sail app screenshot
Sail app screenshot
Sail app screenshot

Why I built Sail

Social media used to be fun.

Algorithms, sponsored posts, advertising, bots.
It's killing the vibe.

So I built Sail, and named it after my daughter. Hopefully she will grow up with an internet that connects people to people, not to the political agendas of foreign governments.

What makes Sail different

Everything you want.
Nothing you don't.

Don't worry, you can still slide into the DMs.

Chronological feed

See posts in the order they were made. No algorithm deciding what matters to you.

Zero data collection

We don't track you, profile you, or sell your attention. In fact, the less I know about you, the better.

No infinite scroll

Run out of new posts to consume? Shame. Go outside.

Locals only

Sail only works in Cape Town. If your mom lives in Hermanus she can still see your posts, but she's not allowed to contribute. Shame.

Come play.

It's easy

Step 01

Join

Sign up using Apple or Google. We don't use your information for anything, except keeping your account secure.

Step 02

Share

Share images, videos, or thoughts (they are not tweets, they are THOUGHTS!)

Step 03

Follow

Ask that girl at Forries for her Sail username, who knows, maybe it'll work.

What is local social media?

Built in Cape Town,
for the people in it.

Think of local social media as a kind of radio station. If you grew up in Durban, you know East Coast Radio. If you grew up in Cape Town, you know Kfm.

Sail is social media for Cape Town. If you're outside of Cape Town you can still use the app, view posts, and message people, but you won't be able to post!

Local means you're never more than a few kilometeres from the actual creator of Sail. Have a suggestion? Want to make sure your data is deleted? Buy me a beer and tell me about it, I'm normally at P&G on a Friday after work.

Local only screenshot
A note on AI

Yes, I used AI to build parts of this.

The backend is like 85% organic, human code.
For the app, I relied on my friend Claude to do some heavy lifting.

But rest assured, there is no part of this app I don't understand.
There is no blackbox risk here.
Just good ol' fashioned javascript talking to a little python app.

Get in touch

Say hello.

Questions, feedback — or you just want to tell me the app is broken.
Drop me an email.

usesail.app@gmail.com