Friends, chat and calls

Friends

The Friends place lists everyone you follow, in groups: Playing (with the game and its cover), Online, and Offline (dimmed, with their last game and when they were last online). A friend whose activity is private is shown as Private.

• Following someone is one-way. When you follow each other you are mutual, and can message each other.
• What you see of a friend's presence depends on them: online and last online are only shown for people who chose to share what they play. If you do not share yours, you do not see theirs either.
• Pressing a friend's row opens the chat; pressing the cover opens the game.

You get a note when a friend starts a game (and you can switch these off in Settings > Notifications).

Chat

A chat with a mutual follower opens in its own window, which you can resize by dragging its sides. It is private to the two of you.

• Messages arrive live. What arrives while the program is closed is only an unread count, never a flood of notes.
• Emoji and emotes: a picker with search (about 1,500 emoji) and the 250 best-known Twitch, FrankerFaceZ, BetterTTV and 7TV emotes. An emote travels as text, :Name:, and is drawn as a picture. The pictures come from those services' own CDNs when they are on screen.
• Files: up to 25 MB each, 5 per message. Pictures, video, documents; programs are never accepted under any name. Files are kept for 90 days, then the bytes are deleted and the message says the file expired.
• Games: send a game as a card with Rate and Want to play buttons. Each of you sees your own rating on it.
• Unread dots on friend rows and on the Friends icon.

Message requests

A message from someone who is not a mutual follower arrives as a request you can accept or decline, so strangers do not land in your chats.

Calls

From a chat you can start a voice or video call. It opens in a call window of its own, with a tile for each person, a green ring around whoever is speaking, round buttons for microphone, camera and screen, and a clock. The chat shows a green In a call bar while it is going.

• Share a screen or a window: a chooser lists your applications and screens with thumbnails. See Voice and screen sharing for quality, sound and what the other side sees.
• Your address stays private: calls go through a relay, so the person you speak to does not learn your IP address. A call is not possible if the relay is not available; the program says so instead of falling back to a direct connection.
• Calls are not recorded and not stored.

Notifications

A message, a call, a friend starting a game and a television being linked each show a note at the corner of your screen. How the note looks (colour, time, shape, side) and which ones are shown is in Settings > Notifications. The bell keeps a list.

Over a game

With the overlay switched on (Settings > Overlay, off by default), a small column at the edge of your game shows who is talking in the voice channel you are in, with a ring round whoever speaks. Alt + M (or a key you choose) opens a panel over the game: what you are playing and for how long, friends playing, chats you can read and answer, and Mute, Deafen and Leave for the voice. The overlay is windows of the program's own; nothing is put into the game, so no anti-cheat has anything to look at. In a game in exclusive full screen it stays away.