Group chats, explained

Starting one

1. In a one-on-one chat, tap Add to group chat (on a phone, it's in the three-dot menu), then pick who else to invite from the people online: up to five people total, including you.
2. Give the group a name, or skip it and use the default.
3. The group opens right away with real-time messaging, the same as a one-on-one chat.

Your groups appear in the lobby's Conversations list alongside your one-on-one chats, with the most recent message first.

Everyone in a group, including you, can invite people, withdraw any pending invitation (whoever sent it), and remove a member. Each of these shows as a line in the chat, like "Sam invited Lee", so the whole group sees who did what, and someone who's removed gets a notification saying who removed them. No two of your groups can have exactly the same people: creating a group, inviting someone or accepting an invite that would make one is refused, and you're offered the group you already have. People who join later see the conversation from the moment they joined, not what was said before.

Why you can't always add someone

A new member can't be added if they've blocked you or any existing member, or if you or any existing member has blocked them. This is checked automatically when you try to add someone; there's nothing to verify manually before sending an invite, and no error message will tell you which specific block caused the rejection, since revealing that would defeat the point of a block being private. Someone who has turned off "Allow group invites" in Edit profile can't be invited either; you'll see that they aren't accepting group invites right now. And you can only invite people who've messaged you in your one-on-one chat (whether they started the conversation or replied to you), or your friends, so nobody gets pulled into a group by a stranger. Only whoever sends the invite needs that; the rest of the group doesn't. Until then, Add to group chat in your one-on-one chat looks faded and says why; in a group's members list, Invite member lists only the people online you can invite. An invitation lasts 24 hours, and ends sooner if it's accepted, declined or withdrawn, if whoever sent it leaves or is removed from the group, or if either account is deleted.

Leaving, and what happens to the group

Any member can leave at any time. Leaving isn't announced in the chat, and once you're out of a group you no longer see its messages; if you're invited back, the conversation starts again from that moment. The group carries on with whoever is left. If the last remaining member leaves, the group itself is deleted along with its message history.

Everything else carries over from one-on-one

Group chats aren't a stripped-down version of regular chat. The AI assistant, dice rolls, coin flips, and icebreakers all work the same way, just visible to the whole group instead of two people. Calls work too, with video if you like: anyone in the group can start or join one. The one thing that doesn't carry over is friend requests, which stay strictly one-on-one; see our friends guide for how that works instead.