Messages — chat directly with family and focus buddies

Messages is a deliberately simple chat: you can only chat while you're both online, and it's gone when you're done. Open widgetstore.net/chat, tap the speech bubble at the top right of the focus space, or tap "Messages" at the top right of Focus Rooms.

Who you can chat with

Only mutual relationships show up in your contacts:

• Circle members: people in the same circle as you (couple / family / friends) in the mobile app.
• Focus buddies: in a focus room, tap "…" next to someone and choose "Add as focus buddy". Once they accept (or add you too), you're buddies. You both need to be in the same room, and you can add up to 20 a day.

Strangers can't find you or see whether you're online.

Online status and invisible mode

• A green dot on a contact means they have Messages open right now. Only your contacts can see that you're online.
• Turn on "Invisible" at the top right and others see you as offline. You can still see them and start chats.
• When someone is offline, the Chat button is greyed out. For circle members you can tap "Miss you" and they'll see it in the app.

Starting a chat

1. Tap "Chat" next to an online contact.
2. An invite pops up on their Messages page. Once they accept, your two browsers connect directly ("Direct"). If nobody accepts within 60 seconds, the invite is cancelled.
3. Send text, emoji and photos (up to 1 MB; larger photos are shrunk on your device first). You'll see typing indicators and read receipts.
4. Tap "End" or leave the page and the chat is over. Messages are cleared on both sides.

Two people can only have one chat at a time.

In the Android app

• Open it from Me → Messages, or tap Chat next to a member in Couple & family spaces to go straight to a chat with them.
• If Messages is open but you are looking at another page (the app is in front or was just switched away), an invite shows a notification — "Ada wants to chat". Tap it to go back to Messages and accept or decline; chats in progress keep going.
• Closing the Messages page means you are offline and won't get invites — the app doesn't stay connected in the background.

Report, block and remove

From "…" at the top right of a chat:

• Report: pick a reason and optionally attach their messages. Messages never pass through our servers, so only the ones you tick are sent to us to review.
• Block: you won't see each other online, chat, or join the same focus room. You can unblock on the Focus Rooms page.
• Remove focus buddy: you're no longer buddies. You can add each other again in a focus room later.

Privacy

• Text, photos, typing indicators and read receipts go device to device over a WebRTC data channel (DTLS-encrypted). Our servers never receive them.
• Messages live only in the page's memory. They're never written to browser storage or uploaded, and they're gone when the chat ends or you leave the page. We can't recover them.
• We only store your focus buddy list and pending buddy requests.
• To connect directly, the other person's browser learns your IP address (this is true of any direct connection). Only chat with people you trust.

See the Privacy Policy for details.

Mainland China

The signaling service currently runs on a workers.dev domain, which some networks in mainland China can't reach. It will move to our own domain once our main domain moves to Cloudflare.