How It Works

1. Establishing a connection

When you press Start, your browser opens a real-time connection to our server using Socket.IO. That connection is used only for coordination — finding you a partner and telling both sides when something changes.

2. Finding a match

You join a queue and are paired with whoever else is waiting. If you added interests, we look first for someone who listed the same one and tell you both what matched you. If nobody with those interests is free, we ask whether you would rather meet anyone — we never quietly ignore a choice you made.

Choices are honoured in both directions. If you asked to meet people in particular countries, of a particular gender, or in a particular age range (the paid Country, Gender & Age Filter), you are only ever paired with somebody who fits — never with a near miss — and somebody else's filter is honoured about you in the same way. A narrower filter therefore takes longer to find a match; that is the cost of it working, not a fault.

Telling us your own gender and age is free and optional. It exists so other people's filters have something to match against; it is never shown to the person you are paired with, and if you leave it blank you simply are not offered to people who are filtering on it.

3. The other ways to talk

• Text chat and audio chat work the same way but use their own queues, so a text user is never paired into a video call. Audio chat is voice only, with no camera, and your microphone starts muted for every call: tap the microphone when you want to talk. Skipping mutes it again.
• Spectator mode puts three people together: one asks a question and watches, two discuss it as Stranger 1 and Stranger 2. The watcher cannot speak — that rule is enforced on our server, not just hidden in the page — but can react to a line with an emoji. All three can report or block any of the others. Every line is checked before it is delivered, as in every other chat.
• Voice rooms hold up to six people around a topic. The audio is a WebRTC mesh: each browser holds a direct connection to each of the others, so nothing passes through us. You always join muted and unmute yourself when you choose to speak. A room also has a text chat, its own address you can share (following that link puts you in the same room as the person who sent it), and you can mute any member just for you, report or block them. Some rooms are scheduled events with a countdown and reminders.

4. Starting the chat — and the “Show” step in video

A video chat begins private on both sides: your camera and microphone are off, the stranger's speaker is off, and their picture is blurred. Each of you can tap Show when you are ready. Only when both of you have tapped it do the camera, microphone and speaker come on together. If you skip, exit, or are skipped, everything goes off again and the blur returns, and you decide again with the next person. The privacy menu also offers face blur, an avatar in place of your camera, and a data saver.

In the video chats a red warning is shown if the stranger's video looks like nudity, and that video is blurred for you.

Once you are paired, WebRTC takes over and connects the two browsers directly to each other. Video and audio travel peer-to-peer, which is what keeps the delay low.

Some networks will not allow a direct connection. In that case the media is relayed through a TURN server to get through — a relay passes encrypted traffic along and cannot read it.

5. Security and anonymity

• Everything between your browser and our server runs over HTTPS.
• WebRTC connections are encrypted end to end by design; it cannot be turned off.
• Chat content is never stored. Messages live in your browser for the length of the conversation and are not written to our database.
• There is no account, so there is no name, email or password anywhere in the system. What we do keep, and why, is set out in the Privacy Policy.

6. Skipping and reconnecting

Skip and both of you are disconnected and returned to the queue for a new match, with camera, microphone and speaker switched off again. If a conversation was worth continuing, you can invite that person back later — they choose whether to accept, and neither of you exchanges any contact details.

7. Extras inside a chat

• Games with your partner: tic-tac-toe, rock paper scissors, truth or dare, word chain and doodle & guess.
• Watch together — suggest a video and watch it in sync while you chat.
• Emoji reactions, live captions and voice effects, each of which you can turn on or off.
• Icebreakers in text and audio chats (not in video).
• Friends and reconnect, and a daily chat streak that unlocks a badge colour and avatars once you are Trusted.

8. Keeping it safe

Every message is checked before delivery, video is spot-checked, and there are no warnings-then-mutes: sending explicit or abusive content, flooding the chat, spamming, or nudity on camera leads to a ban. See the Safety Center for exactly what is checked and how bans work.

Why these technologies

• Socket.IO — fast, reliable real-time messaging that survives weak and changing network conditions.
• WebRTC — direct, encrypted, peer-to-peer video and audio without routing media through a middleman.