Video calling

You can have a one-to-one video call with someone from a message thread. The call is peer-to-peer: your video and audio go directly between the two browsers, so nobody else - this site included - can see or hear it.

Starting a call

A Video call button appears while both of you have the thread open. Before showing it, the site quietly checks that your two browsers can actually reach each other; if they cannot, the call is simply not offered rather than being routed through anything else. The other person can accept or decline.

During a call

Answering replaces the thread with the call: the other person fills the space the messages were in, with your own camera in a small inset. End call hangs up. Declining, hanging up, or either of you leaving the page ends the call, and the conversation comes back exactly as it was.

If the button never appears

That means one of the two browsers could not be reached, and it is usually the network rather than the site - a browser without WebRTC, or a firewall blocking the port the two use to find each other. User Settings has a Video Calling check that runs the setup steps against your own browser and says which one fails, so you can tell a browser problem from a network one.

Privacy

No video or audio ever passes through this site. The only thing relayed is the short setup message the two browsers use to find each other, and nothing is recorded.