You want DeepSeek on mobile, you opened the App Store or Play Store, and you immediately saw a dozen lookalikes with whale logos. Which one is real, what does it actually do once installed, and how does it compare to the desktop chat? This tutorial answers those three questions in order. I run DeepSeek V4-Pro and V4-Flash daily on a paid API account and have used the consumer app on both iOS and Android since launch. By the end of this guide you will have the official app installed, signed in, configured for thinking mode, and you will know exactly which features carry over from web to phone — and which do not.

What you’ll get from the official DeepSeek mobile app

The DeepSeek mobile app is the official consumer client from the Hangzhou-based AI lab. It runs the same models as the web chat — currently DeepSeek V4, released April 24, 2026 — and exposes a chat UI plus DeepThink, web search, and file upload. DeepSeek’s release notes confirm the app keeps the existing base URL while updating the model to deepseek-v4-pro or deepseek-v4-flash, supports OpenAI ChatCompletions and Anthropic APIs, and gives both models 1M context and dual Thinking / Non-Thinking modes. On the consumer app you do not pick the model ID directly; the DeepThink toggle switches V4 between non-thinking (default) and thinking mode for you.

The mobile app and the API are two separate surfaces. The app keeps your conversation history server-side so you can return to past chats from a different device. The API does not — clients must resend the full message history on every request to POST /chat/completions. If you only want to chat, the app is the right choice; if you want to build something, see DeepSeek API getting started.

Prerequisites

• An iPhone running iOS 15 or later, or an Android device on Android 8.0 or later.
• A working email address (Gmail, Outlook, Apple ID, or similar). DeepSeek supports user signup via a global email service such as Gmail, Google or Yahoo.
• An internet connection. The app does not run models on-device — every prompt goes to DeepSeek’s servers.
• Roughly 150 MB of free storage for the install plus cache.
• Optional: a paid API key if you also want to call the same models programmatically.

Step 1 — Find the official app and avoid the clones

The single biggest mistake new users make is installing a copycat. App stores are full of “DeepSeek” wrappers that pipe your prompts through a third-party server, harvest data, and often charge for what the official app gives away free. Verify before you tap Install.

Verification checklist

1. Open the App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android) and search for DeepSeek.
2. Confirm the developer name reads DeepSeek or Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd. Anything else is a clone.
3. Cross-check by visiting deepseek.com in your mobile browser and following the App Store or Play Store badges from the homepage.
4. Check the app’s privacy label. The official app discloses email, device identifiers, and usage data — not bank credentials or contacts.

If you need a deeper walkthrough of authenticity checks, the dedicated guide on verifying the official DeepSeek app covers signature hashes and country-specific publisher names.

Step 2 — Install on iPhone or Android

iPhone (iOS)

1. Open the App Store and tap the verified DeepSeek listing.
2. Tap Get and confirm with Face ID, Touch ID, or your Apple ID password.
3. When prompted, allow notifications only if you want push alerts for completed long generations.
4. Open the app from your home screen.

For platform-specific tips — Siri Shortcuts, widgets, and iCloud-aware settings — see the dedicated DeepSeek on iPhone guide.

Android

1. Open the Play Store and tap the verified DeepSeek listing.
2. Tap Install; the download is around 90 MB.
3. If you live in a region where the Play Store listing is unavailable, download the APK from deepseek.com directly. Never sideload from a third-party APK mirror.
4. Open the app from your launcher.

The Android-specific notes (notification channels, Share Sheet integration, foreground-service behaviour on aggressive battery managers) live in the DeepSeek on Android guide.

Step 3 — Sign in and configure your account

Tap Sign in on the welcome screen. You can authenticate with email, Google, or Apple ID. After your first login the app will sync any prior conversations from the web chat — DeepSeek treats web and mobile as one account, unlike the API. If you forgot your credentials, the reset DeepSeek password guide walks through the email-recovery flow.

Once signed in, open Settings and review three things:

• Data controls. The toggle for “Improve the model for everyone” controls whether your conversations can be used for training. Turn it off if you handle sensitive material. Read the DeepSeek privacy notes for the full picture, including data residency.
• Theme. Dark mode follows system preference by default.
• Language. The app auto-detects, but you can pin English if you bounce between languages.

Step 4 — Use DeepThink, web search, and file upload

The chat composer has three controls worth knowing:

As of the V4 preview, 1M context is now the default across all official DeepSeek services, so the mobile app inherits the same long-document capacity as the web chat. In practice this means you can paste a 200-page PDF and ask follow-ups without the model losing earlier sections.

Voice input

Tap the microphone in the composer to dictate. The app uses on-device speech-to-text on iOS (via Apple’s stack) and Google’s recognizer on Android, then sends the transcript as a normal text prompt. There is no audio-out feature in the consumer app — DeepSeek does not currently ship a voice synthesiser on mobile.

Step 5 — Verify it worked

A three-prompt smoke test confirms the install is healthy:

1. Plain chat: “What is 17 × 23?” The model should answer 391 in non-thinking mode in under three seconds.
2. DeepThink: Toggle DeepThink on and ask, “Plan a 5-day trip to Lisbon for two on a $1,500 budget.” You should see a thinking panel appear, then a structured itinerary.
3. Web search: Toggle Search on and ask, “What did DeepSeek release this month?” The answer should mention V4 with citation links.

If all three work, the app is correctly authenticated and reaching DeepSeek’s servers. For deeper feature exploration, the DeepSeek features reference covers every toggle.

Common errors and fixes

Mobile vs. web vs. API — which surface should you use?

All three hit the same V4 family, but they behave differently.

If you graduate from the app to the API, the surface looks like this in Python (chat requests hit POST /chat/completions, the OpenAI-compatible endpoint):

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.deepseek.com",
    api_key="YOUR_KEY",
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-v4-flash",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarise this PDF."}],
    reasoning_effort="high",
    extra_body={"thinking": {"type": "enabled"}},
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

The legacy deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner IDs still work, but they will be fully retired and inaccessible after July 24, 2026, 15:59 UTC, and currently route to deepseek-v4-flash non-thinking and thinking respectively. Migration is a one-line model= swap; the base URL does not change. DeepSeek also exposes an Anthropic-compatible surface against the same base URL.

What the mobile app does not do

• It does not run models on-device. Every prompt is a network call. If you want fully offline use, see DeepSeek offline setup and running DeepSeek on Ollama on a laptop.
• It does not expose temperature, top_p, or max_tokens. Those are API-only controls. The app uses DeepSeek’s defaults.
• It does not let you call functions or tools. Function calling is an API feature.
• It does not give you a free API quota. Web/app are free for personal chat; the API bills separately. DeepSeek may offer a granted balance — a small promotional credit that can expire — so check the billing console for current offers rather than relying on rumours.

Cost: app vs API for the same workload

The consumer app is free. If you switch to the API for automation, here’s what 1,000,000 calls would cost on deepseek-v4-flash with a 2,000-token cached system prompt, a 200-token user message, and a 300-token reply:

• Cached input: 2,000,000,000 tokens × $0.028/M = $56.00
• Uncached input: 200,000,000 tokens × $0.14/M = $28.00
• Output: 300,000,000 tokens × $0.28/M = $84.00
• Total: $168.00

The same workload on deepseek-v4-pro would cost roughly $1,682 because Pro lists $0.145 cache hit / $1.74 cache miss / $3.48 output per 1M tokens — about ten times the Flash rates. Pricing as of April 2026; verify on the DeepSeek API pricing page before committing.

Next steps

• Push your phone-only chats further with structured prompts: see DeepSeek prompt engineering.
• Build a phone-friendly automation: try the DeepSeek Telegram bot or WhatsApp integration.
• Compare across alternatives in the DeepSeek vs ChatGPT head-to-head, or browse the full set of DeepSeek tutorials.

Last verified: 2026-04-25. DeepSeek AI Guide is an independent resource and is not affiliated with DeepSeek or its parent company. Model IDs, pricing and API behaviour change; check the official DeepSeek documentation and pricing page before committing to a production decision.