This article original was published in nostr.com and it is shared in here for convenience and fast acces within YakiHonne client. All credit goes to https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

Clients are the way that you access and interact with the Nostr protocol.

What's a client?

A client in Nostr is just the app that you use to access and interact with the protocol. It's like the Twitter iOS app or web app that you use to interact with Twitter's feed of tweets.

Because the Nostr protocol is very simple and flexible, different clients have approached the protocol in different ways: some try to make the experience look exactly like Twitter, others try to highlight the importance of relays to the protocol and expose that to users, and others try to use heuristics and algorithms to ensure the maximum degree of censorship-resistance without burdening users too much.

Can I switch clients?

Yes. Because a client is just a way to access the underlying data held by relays, you can switch clients or sign into as many clients as you'd like. As long as each client is looking at the same set of relays for their data, you'll see the same messages in each client.

Should I enter my private key in the client?

Generally, it's better not to enter your private key into any client. Most clients that ask for private keys do their absolute best to keep your key secure but given the nature of software, there are always breaches, exploits, and bugs that could potentially expose your private key.

Remember, your private key is your identity in Nostr, so if it is compromised you'll lose your followers and will have to start from scratch rebuilding your identity.

A few of the already existed clients

Web

• YakiHonne, YakiHonne is a censorship-resistant content media protocol, which supports free curation, creation, publishing, and reporting by various media.
• Snort, an easy-to-use client with great onboarding.
• Coracle, an experimental client that is advancing the UX and internals of social media.
• Iris, a client that throws you in instantly.

iOS

• Damus, the first Nostr client to be banned in China.
• Primal, a very fast client that relies on server-side caching.

iOS and Android

• Plebstr, a closed-source client that is beautiful, fast and smooth.
• ZBD, a custodial, hosted client for ZBD users.
• Current, a client that comes with a built-in Bitcoin wallet.

Android

• Amethyst, a client that has all the features you might imagine.
• Nozzle, a very lean client, but still a work-in-progress.

Desktop

• Gossip, a native client that tries to efficiently follow people in wherever relay they happen to be, made in Rust with egui.
• more-speech, a client that gives you a powerful global view and way of interacting with custom filtering based on web-of-trust and relay selection, made in Clojure. Check out a guide here.
• Lume, an ambitious client made with Tauri.

What are relays ?

Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages to all other connected clients.

The world of relays is changing fast so expect many changes here in the future. One thing to note, because Nostr is decentralized and depends on relays to store and retreive data, if you notice that your Nostr client feels slow, it's most likely due to the relays that you're using. It might be worth adding a few more relays to your client.

Where can I find a list of relays?

The best resource we've found for browsing and assessing the speed of known relays is the nostr.watch site.

What happens if all the relays I use stop working?

If all the relays that you have used in the past go offline, all your posts will be unretrievable. This is one reason that Nostr allows users to connect to many relays – this ensures some degree of backup. That said, if you're really interested in being uncensorable, you can run your own personal relay.

Should i run my own relay?

For most people, no, it's not worth the hassle. That said, if you're technical and want to ensure that your speech is absolutely uncensorable, then you can and should run your own relay. This ensures that you always have a copy of all your Nostr posts and interactions for all time. Here is a guide from Andre Neves for hosting your own relay under 5 minutes

How can someone find me in a personal or obscure relay?

You should be able to hint where you are publishing to to people that may be interested by using the NIP-19 nprofile code or the NIP-05 "relays" field.

If you manage to (and your client helps) you can publish a list of the relays you use to multiple other relays that you don't, so others can find that list and start following you were you are.

Finally, clients from others should include relay hints in events that mention or reply to you, the hints should point to where your notes can be found, so that can give clients a clue.

What public relays exist?

The nostr.watch website keeps a very complete list that has a bunch of information about each relay, not only their address.

How to contribute?

Here are some ways you can contribute to the success of Nostr:

1. Contribute to your favorite client, try to come up with approaches that both make Nostr fun and useful and also promote decentralization and ultra-interoperability
2. Start a new client if you think you have new approaches and ideas to contribute that wouldn't fit in an existing app
3. Check out https://bountsr.com/ for things that might interest you
4. Use Nostr, think about it, and let others know what you have seen in this crazy new idea that has captured your imagination
5. Give feedback to client authors, but patiently
6. Create or contribute to bounties on https://bountsr.com/
7. Give money to people that are doing things you think are good
8. Write explainers and curated resources, put them online so they can help others
9. Check how your skills can help Nostr software or the mission of spreading the Nostr world, partner with others that may be searching for that
10. If you have a good, concrete, real-world use case for Nostr that you want to use yourself and others might want to, bring it up and it's likely that someone else will be interested in building it
11. Annoy content creators, people banned from social media and other personalities that you follow that you think may be interested in Nostr until they look at it