What happens between opening the site and talking to someone

Step zero: video or chat only

The first thing on the front page is a choice between two ways to meet people. Video works the way the rest of this page describes. Chat only gives you the same deck and the same mutual swiping, but a match opens a text conversation instead of a call.

Chat only never asks for your camera. Your microphone stays off unless you deliberately start a voice message, and its track closes as soon as you send or cancel. The picture on your card is drawn from your profile, and taking a real photo is offered but never required.

The two groups are kept apart on purpose. People in chat only are shown to other people in chat only, and video users only see video users. That means picking one is a real decision about your evening rather than a filter, and nobody can be pulled into a call after choosing not to have one.

You can change the choice on the front page whenever you are not in a conversation. Everything below applies to video mode, and the parts about cards, preferences, swiping and matching apply to both.

Step one: camera permission, and why it comes first

This is the video path. If you picked chat only on the front page there is no permission prompt at all, and you can skip straight to step two.

In video mode the browser asks for your camera and mic before anything else, because a profile card needs a picture and there is no way to take one without the camera. Permission is given per site, and you can take it back at any time from the padlock in the address bar.

There is one detail here that most apps get wrong. Keeping a live mic open outside a call makes some phones switch into call audio mode, which is why the volume buttons suddenly control the wrong thing. VibeSwipe asks for both once to get the permission prompt, then stops the audio track straight away and keeps only video for the preview.

If the prompt never shows up, you probably denied it at some point and the browser is remembering. Clear it in site settings and reload to get the prompt back. On iPhone the request has to come after a tap, which is why the flow starts with a button instead of firing the moment the page loads.

Step two: your profile card

A card is a short, throwaway description of you for this session. A first name or nickname, an age, a rough country or region, up to five interest tags, a mood, and one line of free text. No account, no email, no password, and nothing that hangs around afterwards as a public profile.

The photo is a still taken with your own camera rather than an upload. That keeps it recent and makes it awkward to use somebody else's picture. Retake it as many times as you like before you go live, and switch between the front and rear cameras first if you want to.

Everything on the card is self-declared, and it is worth being clear about that. It gives a conversation somewhere to start. It is not proof of anything. Treat other people's cards as a topic, not as facts.

Step three: preferences, and what happens when nobody matches

You can pick a theme and a language. A theme is a broad flavour of conversation rather than a chat room. Both narrow down who shows up in your deck, which helps when a lot of people are online and works against you when hardly anyone is.

A narrow filter on a quiet night means an empty deck, so the pool widens automatically after a short wait rather than leaving you staring at nothing. When that happens the app says so, and a suddenly broad deck makes sense instead of being a mystery.

That is the honest trade with any filter on a live service. Matching is limited to whoever is actually online at that minute, in your part of the world. Filters cannot make people appear, and any service that pretends otherwise is showing you old profiles.

Step four: the deck, and what those previews really are

Cards turn up as you browse and disappear when that person leaves, so the deck is a live view of who is around rather than a directory. Swipe right to send interest, left to pass. Passing is silent. The other person is never told they were skipped.

The picture on a card is not a live stream. It is a low-rate still that refreshes every so often over the signalling connection. That keeps the deck cheap on mobile data, and it means browsing does not broadcast a live feed of you to strangers.

You can block from the deck as well as from a call. Blocking there means that person will not show up again on this device. It is the quickest way to deal with a card you simply do not want to see, and it does not involve moderation at all.

Step five: the mutual match

Nothing opens until two people have swiped right on each other, separately. A single right swipe is interest that sits and waits. It does not ring anybody, open a mic, or send a notification they have to dismiss.

The second the other swipe lands, you are both moved into the call together. From your side it feels instant, because your half was already recorded and only theirs was missing.

Two things follow from that. Nobody ever gets dropped into video with someone who did not pick them, and there is no rejection screen for anyone, because a pass and a person who simply never saw your card look exactly the same from the outside.

Step six: what the connection is doing while you wait

The call runs on WebRTC. Both browsers say what they can send and receive, then hunt for network routes to each other. If a direct path between the two devices exists, the video takes it. That is the fastest option and the cheapest one for everybody.

Sometimes a direct path is impossible. A strict work firewall, a network that blocks the traffic, or carrier NAT on both ends will all do it. The connection then falls back to a relay that passes encrypted packets between the two of you. Relayed calls take a moment longer to start and use more bandwidth, and once they are running they look exactly the same.

Those couple of seconds of 'connecting' are that negotiation happening. If it drags on noticeably longer, a relay is usually being set up, and mobile networks are the most common reason.

Step seven: inside the call

You get video both ways, text chat next to it, mute, camera off, and a camera switch on phones. Muting and turning your camera off are your decision, and the other side is shown that you did it, so nobody is left talking to a frozen picture wondering whether the connection died.

There are icebreaker prompts for the first-few-seconds problem, which is real. Most stranger calls that fail do so in the opening ten seconds, usually because both people are waiting for the other one to start.

Ending is one tap and needs no explanation. If your network drops mid-call, the app tries to get the same conversation back for a short while before it gives up, so a tunnel or a lift does not automatically cost you the chat.

Step eight: after the call

Leaving puts you back on the deck, ready for the next card. If neither of you sent a friend request during the chat, there is no way to reach that person again, and nothing about the conversation is kept. If you did become friends, you each hold the other’s code in your own browser and can call each other directly from then on. Anything you share outside the app is still a decision to make carefully rather than casually.

That is a real limit of a service with no accounts, and it is the price of not building a permanent social graph. If staying in touch with the people you meet is the whole point for you, an app built around profiles will suit you better.

Blocks stick. Reports go to a moderation queue with a still frame and a short piece of text as evidence. Neither is visible to the other person, and neither needs you to stay in the call.

What it costs and what you need

It is free. No premium tier, no card details, nothing to install. It runs in any up-to-date mobile or desktop browser. Video mode needs a camera, a microphone and a connection good enough for video, which is about the same as any video meeting you would join in a browser. Chat only needs none of those things and works on a slow connection.

On mobile data a video call eats bandwidth, so keep an eye on it if your plan is capped. Battery and heat matter too. Encoding video for a long stretch warms a phone up, and that heat is the usual reason quality drops off after a long session.

Everything here is for adults only, and explicit content is banned rather than quietly tolerated. If that is not what you were looking for, this is a good moment to know it.