The yumebee usage guide

1. Getting started

YumeBee is out, and it's free. Get it on the App Store for iPhone, or on Google Play for Android.

YumeBee signs you up with your phone number — no username, no password to remember. Open the app, enter your number, and we send a one-time code by SMS. Type it in and you're in.

YumeBee is only available in India right now. Sign-up needs an Indian (+91) mobile number — the country picker lists other countries greyed out, and the app tells you if you try one. More countries are coming.

Right after the code, first-time accounts set up a profile: first and last name, a @username and a date of birth. You are never asked for a photo of yourself — the profile picture is already filled in with one of YumeBee's built-in avatars, picked at random for you. Keep it, or tap it to choose a different avatar or upload a photo; it's changeable any time in Settings. Then everyone — new accounts and returning ones — is offered a recovery email. That one is optional (it has a “Skip for now”, and it lives in Settings too) and is quietly skipped if you've already sorted it, so signing in with a recovery email already verified takes you straight through. If you skip it, YumeBee asks again next time you sign in — it's the only way back into your account if you ever lose the phone number.

The last step is notifications, and it's your call. YumeBee is a chat app: a message that can't reach you isn't a message, and everything here disappears after 24 hours, so an alert you never got is a conversation you never had — we'd rather you had them on. But the app works fully without them. “Not now” always works, and if notifications are off we ask again when you open the app, at most once a day. Never more than that — with one exception in your favour: turning notifications on resets that clock, so if you turn them off again later the app notices on your next open rather than pretending nothing changed until tomorrow. Between asks, Home shows a small “Notifications are off” card under the search box: tap it to bring the ask back whenever you like, or tap ✕ to hide it until you next reopen the app. On Android, Allow notifications brings up the system's own permission prompt; it only sends you to Settings if that prompt has already been answered with no.

If YumeBee can't see your contacts, signing in ends on one more short page, “Invite your friends & close ones”. Find my friends takes you to the From contacts tab of Add Friend, which explains what contacts access is used for before anything is asked, and the choice to allow it is made there; Not now goes straight to your chats. It shows once per sign-in — never when you simply open the app, and never if contacts access is already on.

That check looks at whether alerts can actually reach you, not just at the main on/off switch. On Android you can turn off the Messages or Friend requests category on its own while the app still counts as “allowed” — either one being off means half of YumeBee can't reach you, so the ask mentions it and names which one. On iPhone there are no per-type switches, but turning off Banners, Lock Screen and Notification Center together means an alert arrives and is shown nowhere, which counts the same way. Things that only delay or quieten alerts — Do Not Disturb, Low Power Mode, battery optimisation, “Deliver Quietly”, sound off — are never asked about; if they're making notifications late or silent, Settings → Notifications → Not getting notifications? will point them out.

To be exact about what that permission buys us, because an ask you can decline is only worth anything if it's precise. We send you two kinds of notification: messages (someone messaged you, in a 1:1 or a group) and invites (a friend request, or an invite to a group chat). That's the entire list — no marketing, no product announcements, no “come back, we miss you” nudges; we have no other notifications to send. And an alert never carries your content: it says who, never what, because your messages are end-to-end encrypted and our servers can't read them either (see What we can and can't see).

There's a deliberate limit here: one device per phone number, at a time. YumeBee doesn't do the multi-device thing other chat apps do. If you install YumeBee on a new phone (or reinstall it), running through OTP again quietly replaces your old device — its keys and session are revoked, and the new phone starts fresh. That's on purpose: it keeps the encryption model simple, and since nothing is backed up anyway (more on that below), there's nothing to migrate.

2. Adding friends

YumeBee is friends-first: you can only message people you're mutually connected with. The Add Friend screen has two tabs — By username and From contacts — and once someone accepts your request, a conversation opens up automatically; there's no separate "start chat" step.

By username

Search for someone by their @handle and send a request. Handles are the only way to look someone up by searching — there's no search by phone number or by real name, on purpose.

You can start from the search box on your friends list, not just the “+” menu. Typing filters your own chats straight away; once you have typed four letters or more, it also looks up people you haven't added yet and lists them underneath, under “More people on yumebee”. Your own chats always come first, the two groups are labelled, and tapping someone new opens their profile — it never sends a request behind your back. The four-letter wait is deliberate: narrowing your own list happens on your phone alone, and a couple of letters of a name shouldn't go to our server looking for strangers.

• You don't need the whole handle, or even its start — searching any part of a username finds it. Handles that begin with what you typed are listed first.
• Search results say where you already stand with someone. A person you have already sent a request to is still listed, marked Pending; a person who has sent you one is marked Wants to add you, and tapping them opens their profile with Accept and Ignore — you don't have to go and find the request in your inbox. Tapping any result opens their profile; it never sends, accepts or ignores anything by itself.
• Ignoring a request takes it out of your requests without telling the sender. On their side it still reads Pending, so they can't send you another one and you won't be notified again. Changed your mind? Find them by username or in your contacts — they're still marked Wants to add you — and tap Accept. (On an older version of the app the button says Send request; it does the same thing, because they already asked.) Magic Connect works too.
• You can send up to 25 new friend requests a day, and 100 in a week. Past either, a new request won't go through until that day or week is up — the week counts seven days from the first request in it, not from Monday. Sending again to someone already marked Pending doesn't count, and accepting requests and Magic Connect are never limited.
• Suggested for you — people on YumeBee roughly near you, under your friends list and in Add Friend before you type — shows at most 25 different people a day. Each request you send from it brings in the next person; once you've been shown 25, the section disappears until the next day.
• Your friends list shows who's online now, plus a last-message preview and unread count for each conversation.
• If a friend hasn't set up a device (fresh install, mid-signup), they show as inactive and won't turn up in search — there's no key bundle to encrypt to yet.
• Removing a friend closes the conversation on both sides and wipes the local chat history for that thread.

From contacts — find and invite people you know

The second tab checks your phone's address book against YumeBee and splits it into two lists. Under On YumeBee are the contacts who already have an account, each with an Add button that sends them an ordinary friend request — tap their row instead to see their profile first. Those rows lead with the name the person chose on YumeBee, and show the name you saved them under beneath it when the two differ, so a contact you know by a nickname is still recognisable. That second name is read from your phone for this screen alone: it never leaves your device, and nowhere else in the app — chats, Home, notifications — shows anything but the name they chose. Under Invite to YumeBee is everyone else, each with an Invite button that opens your own messaging app (Messages on iPhone; whichever SMS app you use on Android) with a short invite and a download link already typed. You send it yourself, from your own number, and can change the text first.

• The app asks for contacts permission the first time, and only when you tap Allow contacts access — just opening the tab never prompts. You can say no and keep using the username tab, which needs no permissions at all.
• YumeBee reads phone numbers only — not names, emails, photos, or addresses — and never shares them.
• People you're already friends with don't appear — they're in your chats list already. If a request is pending between you, the row says so rather than offering to send another.
• Inviting works offline and as often as you like — it's an ordinary text from your phone, so the row keeps its Invite button afterwards (YumeBee can't tell whether you actually sent it).
• There's a search box at the top — address books get long, and it matches on the name you saved, the number, or the name and @username they use on YumeBee.
• YumeBee is India-only for now, so landline, toll-free and overseas numbers can't be invited yet. The app says how many it skipped.

Magic Connect — instant friends, in person

If you're standing next to each other, skip the request entirely. Tap the ＋ button at the top of your chats list and choose Magic connect, have your friend do the same, and hold your phones close together. That's it — no typing, no tapping, no accept step. Both phones play a little celebration and drop you straight into a fresh chat with each other.

• Magic Connect uses Bluetooth to sense the other phone, so the app will ask for Bluetooth permission the first time (and location on Android 11 or older — that's an Android requirement for Bluetooth scanning, YumeBee never reads your location).
• Both people need the Magic Connect screen open at the same time, with the app in the foreground. Nothing is ever broadcast while you're elsewhere in the app.
• What's broadcast is a random, short-lived code — never your name, number, or profile. It expires in about three minutes and is spent the moment a match happens.
• Closer than you think. The screen tells you where you are: "Bring phones close together" means it hasn't heard anyone yet, "Someone's nearby…" means it has but you're not close enough, and "So close…" means it's time to touch the two phones back to back with their tops aligned — the Bluetooth antenna sits at the top of most phones, so that's the position that works. How close you need to be varies by handset; some phones need actual contact.
• If the spell fizzles ("Try bringing your phones together again"), just hold the phones together again for a second or two.
• Already friends? Magic Connect just drops you both into your existing chat.

3. Chatting — text, emoji, reactions, wink, whispers & photos

Chat is real-time over a persistent connection, so messages land instantly when your friend is online, and queue up to deliver the moment they open the app if they're not.

A single text message can be up to 4,000 characters, and it's the same limit in one-to-one and group chats. Emoji take more room than letters, so a message that's mostly emoji tops out sooner — somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 of them. The composer stops accepting typing at the limit and shows a countdown as you get close, so you can see it coming. It's a generous limit for a chat app — it's there so one very long message can't destabilise the connection that carries everyone else's, and it's sized for a full group, where every message is encrypted separately for each member.

No signal? Type anyway. Opening a chat never waits on the network — your conversation is on your phone, so it's on screen straight away, even on a slow connection or none at all. The composer stays open too: anything you send while you're offline is saved on your device with a small clock on the bubble, and YumeBee sends it by itself the moment you're back online — you don't have to reopen the chat, or even the app's chat list, for that to happen. The clock turns into a ✓ once it's really gone. The one thing that still can't be queued is a message to a friend who is signed out of YumeBee entirely, since there's nothing to encrypt it for until they sign back in. Queued messages are subject to the same 24-hour rule as everything else.

The single biggest thing to know about YumeBee: every message and photo disappears 24 hours after it's sent — delivered or not, read or not. There's no chat history screen, no scroll-back-to-last-year, no backup. YumeBee is built to be a cozy, in-the-moment space rather than an archive.

Half-written messages keep themselves. If you start typing and leave the chat before sending — to check something, to answer a notification, or because your phone rang — your words are still in the box when you come back, with the cursor where you left off. The chat list shows Draft: and the start of what you wrote, so you can see at a glance which conversation you left mid-sentence. If you were replying to a particular message, that reply is still attached too. Drafts never leave your phone — we can't see them any more than we can see your messages — and like everything else in YumeBee they clear themselves after 24 hours.

Emoji

Tap the 🐝 bee in the composer for the emoji tray. Tapping an emoji types it into the message box — it doesn't send on its own — so you can string a few together, add words around them, and send when you're ready, exactly like your phone's own emoji keyboard. Emoji from the tray and emoji from your keyboard are the same thing: an ordinary message.

If a message is nothing but emoji (up to three of them), YumeBee shows them big, without a chat bubble — one emoji is the largest, and they shrink a little as you add a second and a third so they always sit on one line. Almost every emoji is animated — YumeBee draws its own artwork rather than relying on your phone's emoji font, so the same emoji looks the same on every phone, however old. Mix emoji into a sentence and they stay the normal size, inline with your words — and they still animate right there in the sentence.

Photos & videos

Send a photo or video the same way you'd send a text — it uploads, your friend downloads and decrypts it on their device, and it disappears with the rest of that day's conversation. Nothing is kept on our servers past that window.

A photo or video sits in the chat like any other message: your friend sees the picture, can open it full-screen as many times as they like, and it goes away when the day's conversation does. Nothing is one-time about it — the 24-hour clock is the only thing that takes it.

A GIF, animated sticker-style WebP, or animated PNG you choose from your gallery stays animated — it plays right in the chat like any other photo. A big one is made smaller on your phone first, and one that's too long even then isn't sent, with a note saying so. If you've turned on Reduce Motion in your phone's settings, it shows a still picture in the chat and plays when you open it.

Tap any photo to open it full screen, and swipe left or right to move through the other photos in that chat — pinch or double-tap to zoom. There's a react button in the bottom-left corner: tap it to pick an emoji without going back to the conversation, exactly the same reaction you'd add by holding the message. Videos have the same button when you open one. Winks, videos and memes aren't part of the photo swipe — a wink can only be opened from its own tile, because opening it uses it up, and a meme doesn't open full screen at all.

Tap the camera icon and choose Share a wink to take a photo or video right there in the app instead of picking one from your gallery. A wink is the one thing in YumeBee that's view-once: your friend sees a locked tile ("Tap for the wink") that shows nothing, the image or clip only downloads when they tap it, and the moment they close the viewer it's gone from their device — the bubble collapses to a "Wink opened" note, and there's no way to reopen it, save it, or reshare it. This happens on-device, so it works the same way for every recipient in a group. It's encrypted like any other photo and lives the same 24 hours, and it has its own look in the chat (a brighter tile with a 😉 mark) and its own notification ("sent you a wink") instead of "sent you a photo"/"a video", so your friend knows it's something you just caught, not something picked from your camera roll.

A wink is also the one thing in YumeBee that tells you it landed. Your own copy of it reads Wink sent, and changes to Wink seen the moment your friend opens it — as they open it, not when they close it again — because "one look, then it's gone" only means something if you find out the look happened. A wink nobody opens just stays on "Wink sent" and disappears at 24 hours like everything else. This is deliberately limited to winks: an ordinary photo or video you send from your gallery never reports back when it's opened, and winks in group chats don't either, since group chats have no read receipts at all. YumeBee's servers can't see any of this — the "seen" signal goes straight to the person who sent the wink.

Whispers (voice messages)

When the message box is empty, the send button becomes a microphone. Hold it down and talk — that's a whisper. Let go and it sends; slide your finger left before you let go and it's discarded. Whispers are capped at one minute: if you're still holding at the limit, the recording stops itself and sends what you said — the readout turns red for the last five seconds so the cut is never a surprise. Type a single character and the microphone turns back into the usual send arrow, so nothing about sending text changes.

Whispers are end-to-end encrypted like everything else, work in group chats too, and disappear with the rest of the day's conversation after 24 hours. Like a photo, a whisper is not view-once — your friend can play it as many times as they like inside that window, because something you didn't quite catch is worth hearing again. Their phone shows "sent you a whisper" when the app is closed; the audio itself is never something we can hear.

Reacting to a message

Hold down any message — text, a photo, a wink, a whisper, a sticker, a meme, a watch card — and a row of emoji appears above the menu. Tap one and it sticks under the message on both phones. Tap + for the full emoji picker if none of the six is the one you want. Reactions are animated, the same way emoji are everywhere else in YumeBee.

That row of six learns what you use. The emoji you've been reacting with most lately move to the front, so your usual one stops being a trip through + every time. It's worked out on your phone from your own recent reactions and never leaves it — and it's kept separate from the emoji keyboard's "Recent" row, because what you type into a message and what you react with aren't the same habit.

You get one reaction per message: tapping a different emoji swaps it, and tapping the same one again takes it back. Tap the little bubble under a message to see who reacted with what — useful in a group, where several people can be hiding behind one emoji. Reactions work in group chats too, and they disappear with the message at 24 hours.

Your friend gets a notification that says "reacted to your photo" (or your whisper, your wink, your message — whatever it was). The emoji itself is end-to-end encrypted like any message, so it isn't in the notification and our servers never see which one you picked, or which message you put it on. Only the person whose message you reacted to is told; in a group, everyone else just sees the emoji appear. You can't react to your own messages — a reaction is a reply to someone, and there'd be nobody to tell — but reactions other people leave on yours show up under them as usual. A reaction never marks a chat unread or moves it up your list: it isn't a new message, it's a mark on one that's already there.

Deleting a message you sent

You can delete your own messages before the 24 hours are up, and it's a delete for everyone: the message is removed from your friend's device — or every member's device, in a group — as well as your own, leaving no "this message was deleted" placeholder behind. If they're offline, it disappears the next time they open the app.

When the message was a photo, video or whisper, the encrypted file is deleted from our storage at the same moment, so a friend who hadn't opened it yet can't fetch it afterwards (and a whisper that's playing right then stops). If you're offline when you delete, the deletion is queued and finishes as soon as you reconnect.

4. Wink streaks

Wink each other and the days start counting. A small chip appears next to the chat on your home screen and in the chat's header, showing how many days in a row you've kept it going.

A day only counts when everyone has winked. In a 1:1 that means both of you — ten winks from you and none back doesn't count for anything. In a group it means every member, and the chip shows how many still have to (for example 4/5) until the day is complete. Extra winks are welcome but they don't stack: there's no multiplier and no score.

The clock is a rolling 24 hours starting from the wink that completed the last day — not midnight — so time zones and travel never reset anyone. The chip turns amber when there are under six hours left, and you'll get at most two reminders in a day (one at six hours, one at one hour), and only if you're the one who still owes a wink. Nobody is ever nudged about someone else's wink.

Winking early never costs you a day. A new day can be added about 20 hours after the last one was. If everyone has already winked for the next day before then — say you both winked at 6pm yesterday and again at 1pm today — the day is saved: the chip shows it straight away, it's added to the count as soon as the 20 hours are up, and your next 24 hours start from that moment. Winking again within about ten hours of the day that just counted is treated as the same day: it doesn't add anything, but it doesn't hurt either — it just restarts your 24 hours.

There are also a few quiet extra hours past the 24, which exist for one reason: a notification that arrived late, or a wink you sent with no signal that only went out when you reconnected, shouldn't cost you a streak. We don't advertise them as extra time, because they're a safety net for the network rather than a longer deadline.

Sending is what counts, not opening. A wink your friend never got round to opening still keeps the streak alive — which is also the only thing that's possible, since our servers never learn whether a wink was opened.

If a streak does end, the chip shows the number crossed out for a day and then disappears, and your longest-ever streak is kept. We never send a notification about a streak ending: there's nothing you can do about it by then. Group members who joined partway through a day aren't counted until the next one, and someone who is signed out isn't counted at all, so one dormant member can't hold a whole group's streak hostage. The app never tells anyone who missed a day.

5. Presence, typing & receipts

You'll see "online now" on a friend's profile when they're actively connected, a typing indicator while they're composing a reply, and the familiar double-check (✓✓) once a message is delivered and then read.

These three signals — presence, typing, receipts — are the one part of YumeBee that isn't end-to-end encrypted (see the privacy section below for why). They're low-sensitivity, ephemeral, and never stored past the moment they happen.

6. Sharing a watch card

"You have to watch this" is the whole reason YumeBee's catalog feature exists. Tap the watch-card icon in a chat, search any movie, TV show, or anime, and pick a title.

• For a series or anime, mark the specific episode you've reached before you send — your friend sees exactly where you are.
• Add a star rating and a short note ("ep 12 wrecked me, you HAVE to catch up") if you want.
• Pick who gets it on the Share to screen — one list of all your chats (friends and groups together) with a search bar, letting you tick several at once, and it puts whichever chats you share into most often at the top (the same on-device history the OS share sheet uses — it never leaves your phone).
• Send it, and it lands in the chat as a poster card with an "Open in YumeBee" button that opens the title's details — synopsis, year, and where to stream it.

Like everything else in the chat, the in-conversation card disappears after 24 hours. Because a watch-card recommendation isn't really "content" the same way a message is, it's the one thing on YumeBee that isn't end-to-end encrypted — the note you type does pass through our server in the clear. If that matters to you for a particular recommendation, keep the note out of it.

7. Stickers, memes, and making your own

The Stickers tab in the composer has a set of ready-made packs you can browse and send from, plus a "Recent" pack that keeps your most-used stickers up top so you're not hunting for the same one every day.

Age-restricted packs

Some packs are 18+ and only appear if the date of birth you gave at signup says you're old enough. They're marked with an "18+" tag next to the pack name. The filtering happens on our servers, so a pack you're too young for simply isn't in your tray — there's nothing to unlock and no setting to change. Your date of birth is set once at signup and can't be edited, so this isn't something you can toggle.

This applies to what you can browse and send. If a friend sends you a sticker, it shows up in your chat like any other message — we can't read or filter message content, because it's end-to-end encrypted. If someone sends you something you don't want, open their profile and report them — a sticker can't be reported from the message itself, because we'd have no way to see it.

Make your own sticker

YumeBee can turn any photo into a sticker, cutting the subject out onto a transparent background automatically — point it at a photo and it finds the subject for you, no manual masking required. If it can't find a confident subject, it falls back to a plain square crop instead of leaving you stuck.

Custom stickers you make are private — unlike catalog stickers (which are public, shared images), a sticker made from your own photo travels through the same encrypted pipeline as a photo message every time you send it, and is never stored as a durable, reusable file on our servers.

Memes: your own library

The Memes tab in the composer has two sections: Recent, the memes you've sent lately, and My, your own library. Tap Add memes in My to pick up to 10 pictures or animations — GIF, animated WebP, or animated PNG — from your gallery. Tap a meme to send it straight away; long-press one to delete it from your library. A library holds up to 100.

Everything is shrunk on your phone before it's saved, so a meme sends quickly: a big animation is made smaller and, if it has to be, a little less smooth, and one that's still too long after that is left out with a note saying so. Pictures are re-saved the same way a photo is — which also drops camera details such as where a photo was taken.

Your memes are private and live only on your phone (they're not included in iCloud backups). Like a custom sticker, a meme is sent through the same end-to-end encrypted pipeline as a photo, fresh each time, and disappears with the rest of the chat after 24 hours. If a friend sends you a meme you want to keep, long-press it and choose Add to my memes — offered on memes only, never on an ordinary photo someone sends you. A friend whose app hasn't been updated yet still gets your meme, as a regular photo.

In the chat a meme carries a small MEME label in its top-right corner, so it never looks like an ordinary photo. It's shown whole — never cropped — and it plays right there in the conversation; tapping it doesn't open it full screen the way a photo does. If you've turned on Reduce Motion in your phone's settings, an animated meme shows a still picture — tap it to play it, and tap again to stop.

8. Group chats

Alongside 1:1 conversations, YumeBee supports group chats of up to 2 to 20 people (including the creator). Groups get their own name, member list, and the same real-time delivery and 24-hour ephemerality as a 1:1 chat — nothing sticks around longer just because more people are in the room. Groups deliberately skip typing indicators and read receipts (emoji reactions work the same as in a 1:1), and there are no admins — any member can invite, remove, rename, or leave.

Add or remove members, and everyone in the group is notified live if the thread is open, or catches up the moment they reopen the app if it's not.

Gossip groups

When you create a group, the first thing YumeBee asks is what kind it is: a normal group, or a gossip group. In a gossip group, messages arrive with no sender — no name, no profile photo, no colour, and no "most active member" bee. Everyone reads what was said; nobody in the chat sees who said it. Your own messages still sit on your side of the thread, as they do anywhere else.

You choose this once, when the group is made, and it can't be changed afterwards — so nothing you've already sent quietly changes meaning later. Everything else works exactly like any other group: end-to-end encrypted, gone in 24 hours, up to 20 people, with replies, reactions, photos, videos and whispers.

A few things behave differently, all for the same reason. The chat list shows the message without a "who sent it" prefix. Notifications say the group's name and "Someone sent a photo" rather than naming anybody. Tapping the reactions under a message shows which emoji were used, but not who used them. You can still report a message by holding it, and the report carries that message to us so a reviewer can read it — but it never tells you who sent it, and it doesn't offer to block them, since a blocked friend going quiet would give it away. And @mentions are turned off: tagging someone would give away who was talking, because everyone else reading it can rule out both themselves and the person tagged.

Hiding the sender is something each phone does for itself, so everyone in the group needs a recent version of YumeBee. If you try to add someone whose app is too old, YumeBee tells you exactly who, and they'll need to update and open the app before you can add them — YumeBee only learns a phone's version when the app is opened.

One thing worth being clear about: a gossip group hides names inside the app, from the people in the chat. It is not anonymity from YumeBee — our servers still route each message from one person to another, exactly as they do in any chat, even though they can't read what's in it. If that distinction matters for what you're about to say, it's worth knowing before you say it.

Type @ in a group's composer to tag a member — a short list of the group's members pops up as you type; pick one to insert "@FirstName" and send. The tagged person gets a "you were tagged" notification (and everyone else in the group sees who got tagged), even if their app is closed.

9. Sharing into YumeBee

You don't have to open YumeBee first — use your phone's native Share sheet from Photos, Safari, or any other app and pick YumeBee. Photos, videos, text and links all work. A Send to… screen opens with all your friends and groups in one list — chats are chats, so groups aren't filed away in a separate section. There's a search bar at the top, and you can tick as many chats as you like before hitting Send at the bottom. It goes to every one of them through the same encrypted pipeline as anything you'd send from inside the app.

The list puts whichever chats you share into most often at the top, so your usual people are one tap away — most shares first, and the most recent of those first among equals; anything you've never shared into sits below that, alphabetically. It's one shared history with the watch-card "Share to" screen, so sending someone a movie also lifts them here. That ordering is worked out entirely on your own phone from your own sharing history; it's never sent anywhere, and it's wiped along with everything else if you delete your account.

If you shared a link or some text, it appears in an editable box at the top of that screen — so you can add a note or trim it before sending. Photos send as they are (there are no photo captions in YumeBee). You can share up to 10 photos and videos at once, mixed however you like, and each one arrives as its own message in every chat you picked, in the order you shared them; if you select more than that, the extras are left out and the preview tells you so.

Send is ready the moment you tick someone — you're never held on this screen waiting for a video to be processed. Tap it and YumeBee takes you straight into the chat, where the photo or video is already sitting there as a message with a progress ring and a clock, exactly like something you'd sent from inside the app. Shrinking the video and uploading it happen right there, behind the message, and the clock becomes a tick when it's on its way. Oversized photos are left out with a note on the preview before you send. A friend who isn't signed in on a device can't receive anything, so they're skipped and you're told which sends didn't go through.

10. Every setting, explained

Settings is reached from your profile. It's organized into a few small, honest groups rather than one long list — here's what each row actually does.

Your profile

• Name & username — edit your first name, last name, and @username (6–20 characters, lowercase letters/numbers/underscores). A taken handle blocks Save; keeping your current one is always fine. Names take letters in any script — English, Hindi, Tamil and the rest — plus spaces and the punctuation real names use: apostrophes (D'Souza), hyphens (Anne-Marie) and periods for initials (Venkatesh K.). Digits, emoji and other symbols aren't accepted, and a name needs at least one letter in it, so a name made only of punctuation doesn't work either. Names also can't contain profanity or slurs, in English or Hindi — a name that does isn't saved, and the name fields say so, both when you first set up your profile and when you edit it.
• Avatar — tap it to either upload a photo or pick from a grid of built-in preset avatars. Picking one clears the other — you always have exactly one avatar set, starting with the one chosen for you at signup. Changing it updates instantly for your friends, even the ones who were offline when you changed it.
• Date of birth — shown, but not editable, once set at signup.

Account

• Phone number — read-only. It's your login identity, so changing it goes through the recovery flow, not a settings field.
• Recovery email — bind one here so you can get back into your account if you ever lose access to your phone number. You enter an address, we email you a 6-digit code, and you type it back in to confirm. If the code doesn't arrive, check your spam folder — see Losing your phone & recovery for the full walkthrough, resend limits, and troubleshooting.

Preferences

• Theme & appearance — pick one of six colour palettes, plus a dark-mode toggle.
• Notifications — no on/off switch: notifications are turned on and off in your phone's own settings, which is the only place that can really do it (and the only place YumeBee can see). There's no alert-preview setting either, because push notifications never contain your message content in the first place (see below). What this page does have is the “Not getting notifications?” troubleshooter, for alerts that are switched on but not arriving.

The app icon also carries a badge count: unread messages across all your chats and groups, plus any friend requests or group invites waiting for you. It clears itself as you read. On iPhone this is the usual red number. On Android it depends on your launcher — Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei show the number, while stock Android (Pixel and similar) shows a dot instead, which is how those launchers work for every app, not just YumeBee.

Personal → Privacy

• Share online status — the one privacy toggle today. Turning it off is symmetric: it hides your "online now" status from friends and groups, but it also hides their online status from you. It's a local, on-device preference — no server round-trip, no reconnect.

About & account actions

• About yumebee — opens this website (yumebee.app) in your browser.
• Log out — ends your session on this device and returns you to the welcome screen. Your account and friends are untouched; signing back in with the same number reconnects you.
• Delete account — at the very bottom, separated from everything else. It first asks Why are you leaving? (pick a reason, optionally add a note, then Continue — or Keep my account to back out). Several reasons also point at what the app already offers: finding friends from your contacts, the notification troubleshooter, Theme & appearance for the look, reporting or blocking someone from their profile, and the Signal Protocol encryption behind every message. This is a hard, irreversible delete: you then have to type DELETE to confirm. It removes your messages, photos, friendships, and group memberships for everyone, wipes your keys and account from the server, and signs you out. There's no recovery from this — starting over means re-onboarding as a brand-new account.

11. Privacy & encryption, honestly explained

Text and photos are end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol — the same cryptography behind Signal and WhatsApp. Your messages are encrypted on your device and only decrypted on your friend's device. YumeBee's servers hold your public key so people can start a session with you, and route ciphertext — they cannot read your messages, and they never hold your private keys. For how that works under the hood — X3DH, the Double Ratchet, how photos and group messages are encrypted — see What is end-to-end encryption?

What isn't encrypted, and why

• Typing indicators, read receipts, and presence — these are lightweight, throwaway control signals. Encrypting every keystroke of a typing indicator would churn the encryption ratchet for no real benefit, so these travel as plain, TLS-protected signals instead.
• Watch cards — server-readable by design, so YumeBee can keep a permanent record that a card was sent (title, episode, your note), even though the in-chat card itself still disappears after 24 hours. That record is never shown back to you or anyone else — it's bookkeeping, not a history feature.
• Metadata — encryption protects content, not the fact that a connection exists. Who you're chatting with and roughly when is visible to the server, the same way it is on any messaging service. We're upfront about that rather than overclaiming what E2EE covers.
• What a notification needs to say — enough to label the alert, and nothing more. That a message was a photo rather than text; in a group, who you @mentioned; and when you react, whose message it was and what kind it was. Never the message, the name you typed, or the emoji you picked — those stay encrypted.

No message history, on purpose

There's no cloud backup and no "restore my chats" option. Every message and photo is designed to vanish after 24 hours whether or not it was ever opened, and a new device only ever sees messages sent after it's set up — nothing before that point is recoverable, by you or by us.

Your phone's own backup (iCloud, or a computer) doesn't carry your chats either: YumeBee keeps its messages and encryption keys out of it. If you restore a backup onto a phone — including when you move to a new iPhone — YumeBee starts fresh there and you sign in again with your phone number.

12. Blocking & reporting someone

These are two different things and it's worth knowing which you want. Blocking is private and instant: it stops their messages reaching you and tells nobody, including them. Reporting is how you tell us. Because your chats are end-to-end encrypted, we can't see what anyone sends — a report is the only way anything reaches the people who can act on it.

How to block

• Open the person's profile (tap their name at the top of a chat, or their row in your friends list) and tap Block friend.
• Their messages stop arriving, they get no delivered tick, and they're never told. Tap Unblock on the same screen to undo it.
• Blocking works for direct messages. If you share a group, their group messages still appear — leave the group, or ask any member to remove them.

How to report

You can report someone from four places, whichever you reach first:

• Their profile → Report friend.
• Long-press a message they sent → Report. Available on text messages: your phone sends us that message's text along with the report, which is the only way we can read it — we hold nothing but the encrypted version. For a photo, video, wink, voice message, sticker or meme, report the person instead.
• Group Info → tap a member → Report member.
• Anyone's preview screen — including someone who's only sent you a friend request. You don't have to accept a stranger to report them.

Pick a reason, add anything that would help a reviewer, and send. Reporting a person from a one-to-one chat also sends the last 10 text messages of that chat, from both of you, so a reviewer sees the exchange rather than one line — the screen shows you exactly what will be sent before you send it, and photos, videos, winks and voice messages are never included. Reporting someone in a group sends no messages at all. The person is blocked at the same time unless you switch that off, and they're never told you reported them. A person reads every report.

The first reason on the list is Child safety — sexual content involving a minor, grooming, or sextortion. Those are escalated ahead of everything else and confirmed cases are reported to the authorities. If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. If you'd rather write to a person — or have something that doesn't fit in a text box — that screen also offers our child-safety address, admin@yumebee.app. Our full published standards are on the Child Safety Standards page.

One honest caveat: whatever you type into the report is all a reviewer will see. We can't open the conversation to check, so the more you describe, the more we can do.

13. Hiding a chat (Move to hive)

Any 1:1 or group chat can be pulled out of your list entirely. It's called Move to hive, and it's a privacy convenience for when someone else might glance at your phone — not a security feature, and it isn't protected by a passcode or Face ID.

How to hide a chat

• Open the person's profile, or a group's Group Info, and tap Move to hive.
• A confirmation explains what's about to happen and — this is the part worth reading, since it's the only place we say it — how to get the chat back.
• The chat disappears from your list immediately. Messages keep arriving exactly as before; nothing is muted, blocked, or deleted, and the other person is never told.

How to see it again

Press and hold the bee mark at the top-left of your friends list for 2 seconds. Every hidden chat reappears, sorted into your list exactly where it would sit if it had never been hidden — there's no separate "Hive" screen. Tap the bee once to hide them again, or just close the app: reopening it hides them automatically. Backgrounding the app (switching to another app and coming back) does not hide them — only fully closing and reopening does.

What changes about notifications

A hidden chat's alerts arrive titled "Hive" instead of a name — the alert still says roughly what arrived ("New photo", "New reaction"), but never who sent it or which chat it's in. Tapping that notification opens your friends list, not the chat; you still need the hold-the-bee gesture to open it. It also doesn't add to the number on your app icon, since that number can't be explained (or cleared) without knowing the gesture.

This is the one thing about your account we're deliberately told beyond what's needed to run the app: which conversations you've hidden, so a notification can leave the name out even when your phone's screen is locked and our app isn't running. We don't learn why, and it's never anything about who's in the chat or what was said — see Privacy.

14. Losing your phone & recovery

Since your account is tied to your phone number and a single device, getting back in on a new phone is just the OTP flow again — it replaces the old device automatically.

For situations where you've also lost access to your number, you can bind a recovery email in Settings ahead of time. If you ever lose your number, the recovery flow verifies your email first, then lets you re-verify a new phone number and re-links your account to it — your account survives, but as with any device change, message history does not (there wasn't any to begin with).

Adding a recovery email

Signing in offers this step whenever your account doesn't have a recovery email yet (straight after profile setup on a new account) — it's always skippable. You can also bind one any time from Settings:

1. Go to Settings → Account → Recovery email.
2. Enter the address you want to use and confirm.
3. YumeBee emails you a 6-digit code. It comes from admin@yumebee.app, with the subject “YumeBee — confirm your recovery email”.
4. Type the code back into the app. The code is valid for 15 minutes, and you get 5 attempts to enter it before it's discarded and you need a fresh one. After the fifth wrong try the app says the code no longer works, clears the box, and shows Resend code straight away (no countdown) so you can get a new code.

Once verified, that address is bound to your account. You can have one recovery email at a time — to change it, just run the same flow again with the new address, and it replaces the old one after you verify.

Didn't get the email? Check your spam folder first

If the code doesn't show up within a minute or two, look in your spam or junk folder before trying anything else. Automated code emails land there more often than you'd expect, especially the first time a new address hears from us.

Still nothing? Work through these:

• Search your whole mailbox for yumebee rather than browsing folders — filters and tabs (Promotions, Updates) can put it somewhere you wouldn't look.
• Double-check the address you typed for a typo. We can't tell you whether an address is wrong on the recovery flow, so a silent nothing is the expected result of a typo.
• Corporate and school mailboxes sometimes block outside automated mail entirely. If you have the option, use a personal address instead — it's the one you want to still control if you lose your phone.
• Your Google storage may be full. Gmail shares one storage quota with Google Drive and Google Photos (and Android WhatsApp backups), and once it's full Gmail stops accepting new email — including our code. Nothing tells us or the app when this happens. Free up some space and request a new code, or use a different email address. If you're recovering a lost phone, you have to free up space, since the code can only go to the address already on your account.

Getting a new code sent

The email code screen has a Resend in 0:30 countdown under the code box. When it reaches zero it becomes a Resend code link; tap it to email a new code to the same address. After you tap it, the app reminds you to check spam and that a full Google storage quota stops new emails from arriving. To use a different address instead, go back and enter it again.

A fresh code replaces the previous one, so if more than one email arrives, always use the newest. Sends are rate-limited to 5 per 2 minutes, counted both per account and per email address — if you hit that, wait a moment and try again. Requesting more codes won't make a delayed email land any faster; if the first one isn't in your inbox, it's usually in spam, or your Google storage is full.

Using your recovery email to get back in

1. On the sign-in screen, choose to recover with your email instead of your phone number.
2. Enter your bound recovery address. For your privacy, YumeBee shows the same confirmation whether or not the address is on file — it never reveals which addresses have accounts — so check your inbox (and spam) to know whether a code is on its way.
3. Enter the emailed code to prove the address is yours.
4. Enter your new phone number. YumeBee sends a normal SMS OTP to it.
5. Enter that code. Your account re-links to the new number and the new device, and your old device is signed out.

Your friends, groups, and profile survive this. Messages don't — there was never any history stored to restore.

15. Keeping the app up to date

YumeBee tells you when a newer version is out, so you don't have to go looking. There are two kinds of prompt, and they mean different things.

Most of the time it's a gentle nudge — a small card, marked Update ready, with Get the update and Not now. Its headline says what the update brings: when the new version adds something you don't have yet, it names it, with a line or two on what you get; otherwise it's a short note that there are fresh fixes (“Something new is buzzing”). Nothing is broken. “Not now” — or a tap anywhere around the card — dismisses it and you carry on, and it won't ask again that day. You can keep using the app indefinitely without taking it. (Older versions of the app title this dialog “A newer yumebee is here”, with Update and Later.)

Occasionally a version gets old enough that it can no longer work correctly with the rest of YumeBee, and then you'll see a full-screen update page. It's usually titled “Time for a quick update”, or carries a headline about the new version with a What's waiting for you card listing what it brings, and it has a Get the update button (Update yumebee on older versions) that opens the App Store or Play Store. Messages sent to you while you're on it wait for you, but only for their 24 hours. This one can't be dismissed — there's no close button, because on a version that far behind, messages may genuinely fail to send or arrive, and letting you carry on would just look like the app was broken. Updating is the only way past it. If it can't reach us to check, it says so — reopen the app to check again.

Neither prompt advertises anything but the update itself, and neither is a notification — you'll only ever see them inside the app. The check happens quietly while the app is opening and adds nothing to how long that takes; if you're offline it's skipped entirely and you go straight to your chats. Updating never signs you out, and it doesn't affect your friends, your groups, or your recovery email. It also won't bring back old messages: everything still disappears after 24 hours, so anything already expired is gone whether you update or not.

16. Quick answers (FAQ)

The short version of everything above, in case you just want one answer.

Where do I download YumeBee?

YumeBee is free on both stores: the App Store for iPhone and Google Play for Android. It's published by YuMe Network Private Limited, and it's listed in India for now — the same place sign-up works.

How do I sign up for YumeBee?

YumeBee is available in India for now, so you'll need an Indian (+91) mobile number. Enter it in the app and YumeBee sends a 6-digit one-time code by SMS; enter it to sign in. No username or password at signup. New accounts then set up a profile. Every sign-in offers a recovery email (skippable, available later in Settings, and skipped automatically once you've sorted it) and then asks about notifications — also skippable; see the next answer.

Do I have to turn on notifications?

No — the app works fully without them. But YumeBee is a chat app and everything in it disappears after 24 hours, so an alert you never got is a conversation you never had, and if they're off we'll ask when you open the app — at most once a day, and “Not now” always works. We notice when only part of them is off, too: on Android, turning off the Messages or Friend requests category on its own, and on iPhone turning off Banners, Lock Screen and Notification Center together. Do Not Disturb, Low Power Mode and “Deliver Quietly” are never asked about — they delay or quieten alerts rather than stop them. We only ever send two things: messages (someone messaged you, 1:1 or in a group) and invites (friend requests and group invites). Nothing else — no marketing, no product news, no re-engagement nudges. And an alert never shows your content: it says who, never what.

What's the picture that sometimes appears when I open YumeBee?

An occasional announcement from YumeBee, shown as a single picture — or a short "Did you know?" card about something new, sometimes with a button that takes you straight to it — over the app, which blurs behind it. You'll see it at most a few times a day (usually once), only on your chats list and only once you're signed in — when you open the app, or when you first reach your chats after signing in. Never over a chat, never on the sign-in screens, never when you opened the app by tapping a notification or by sharing something into it, and never on top of an update prompt or the notifications question. Close it with the × on its top-right corner, by tapping anywhere outside it, or with Back on Android. The picture comes from our own servers and is downloaded in the background, and the app never waits for it: if it isn't ready the moment you open the app (on a slow connection, say), you just won't see it that time. It's not a notification, and it carries nothing about you or your chats.

Can I use YumeBee on more than one device at once?

No. One active device per phone number. Signing in with the same number on a new phone replaces the previous device and revokes its keys and session.

How do I add a friend by holding phones together (Magic Connect)?

Add Friend → Magic Connect, on both phones, then hold them close. The two of you become friends instantly — no request or accept step — and both phones open a fresh chat together. It uses Bluetooth and only works with both apps open in the foreground.

How do I add or invite someone from my contacts?

Add Friend → From contacts, then allow contacts access. Your address book splits into two lists: On YumeBee, where Add sends a friend request, and Invite to YumeBee, where Invite opens your messaging app with an invite and a download link ready to send. People you're already friends with don't appear at all.

Can YumeBee tell me which of my contacts already use the app?

Yes. That's what the "On YumeBee" list is — the same contact matching WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram do. It's worth knowing what that involves: to build that list, our server checks your contacts' phone numbers against our users. We read phone numbers only — never names, photos, emails or addresses. How often the app can run that check is capped per account, so nobody can feed a phone book through it to work out who's here. Invites go from your own messaging app, so we never learn who you invited.

Is YumeBee end-to-end encrypted?

Text and photos are, using the Signal protocol. Typing indicators, read receipts, presence, and watch cards are not — they're low-sensitivity control signals or server-readable records, protected only by TLS. In a group chat, @tagging someone reveals which member you tagged to the server (so it can send the "you were tagged" push) — never the message text itself, which stays fully encrypted either way. Reacting works the same way: the emoji and which message you put it on are encrypted, but whose message it was and what kind it was reach the server so it can send that one person a "reacted to your photo" push.

How do I react to a message with an emoji?

Hold down the message. A row of six emoji appears above the menu — tap one, or tap + for the full picker. It sticks under the message on both phones, and it's animated. You get one reaction per message: a different emoji swaps it, the same one again removes it. Tap the emoji bubble to see who reacted. This works on anything someone else sent — text, photos, winks, whispers, stickers, memes, watch cards — and in group chats too. You can't react to your own messages. Only the person whose message you reacted to gets a notification ("reacted to your photo"), and the emoji itself is end-to-end encrypted, so it isn't in the notification and our servers never see it.

Do messages disappear on YumeBee?

Yes, always — 24 hours after they're sent, delivered or not, read or not. There's no chat history screen and no backup.

Does YumeBee have group chats? How big?

Yes, 2 to 20 people per group (including the creator), with the same real-time delivery and 24-hour ephemerality as a 1:1 chat.

What is a watch card?

A movie/TV/anime recommendation you send in a chat: search the catalog, pick a title, optionally mark your episode, add a rating and note, send. The in-chat card disappears after 24h; the backend keeps a permanent, never-shown send record. Watch cards are not end-to-end encrypted.

How do I add my own memes?

Memes tab → My → Add memes, and pick up to 10 pictures or animations (GIF, animated WebP, animated PNG). They're shrunk on your phone and kept only there; tap one to send it. Long-press a meme a friend sent you → Add to my memes to keep it.

Can I make my own stickers?

Yes — turn any photo into a sticker with automatic subject cut-out (or a plain crop if cut-out isn't confident). Custom stickers are private and re-encrypted fresh on every send, unlike public catalog stickers.

How do I turn off my online status?

Settings → Privacy → Share online status → off. It's symmetric: you also stop seeing your friends' online status.

How do I delete my account?

Settings → Delete account (bottom of the list) → type DELETE to confirm. Immediate, irreversible, removes everything for everyone. The step-by-step walkthrough is at yumebee.app/delete-account.

What happens if I lose my phone?

Sign in again on a new device. Once the code checks out, YumeBee asks Continue on this phone?; tap Continue here and the old one is signed out (YumeBee is on one phone at a time). If you've also lost your number, a recovery email bound in Settings lets you verify by email, then re-link a new phone number. Message history is never recoverable — there's nothing backed up to restore.

How do I add a recovery email?

YumeBee offers the step on every sign-in until you've bound one (right after profile setup on a new account). You can also do it any time from Settings → Account → Recovery email. Enter the address, and YumeBee emails a 6-digit code from admin@yumebee.app; type it back into the app to confirm. The code lasts 15 minutes and you get 5 attempts. You can have one recovery email at a time — running the flow again with a different address replaces it.

I didn't get the recovery email. What do I do?

Check your spam or junk folder first — automated code emails often land there, especially the first time a new address hears from us. If you find it, mark it Not spam and add admin@yumebee.app to your contacts so the next one reaches your inbox. Otherwise, search your whole mailbox for “yumebee” (it may be under Promotions or Updates), check the address you typed for a typo, and try a personal address if you used a work or school one that may block outside automated mail.

How do I get the recovery code sent again?

There's no resend button on the email code screen. Go back from “Check your inbox” and submit your address again with Send code (or Send recovery code when recovering a lost phone). The new code replaces the old one, so use the most recent email. Sends are limited to 5 per 2 minutes per account and per address — if you hit that, wait a moment and try again. Requesting another code won't help if the first email is already sitting in spam, so look there first.

Do I have to update the YumeBee app?

Usually no. Most update prompts are a dismissible card saying what the new version brings, with a Get the update and a Not now button (older versions of the app: “A newer yumebee is here”, with Update and Later) — “Not now” works, and it won't ask again that day. Occasionally a version becomes too old to work properly, and then YumeBee shows a full-screen page saying this version has retired (usually titled “Time for a quick update”) that can't be dismissed, because on that version messages may fail to send or arrive; updating from the store is the only way past it. Updating never signs you out and doesn't touch your friends, groups or recovery email — but it can't bring back expired messages, which still disappear after 24 hours either way.

How do I send feedback or report a problem with the app?

Message @yumebee, the official admin account — add it from Add friend → By username and tell us what went wrong. That chat expires after 24 hours like any other, so use admin@yumebee.app if you want a record. To report another person's behaviour, use Report in the app instead. More on getting help.

Does YumeBee support voice or video calls?

No — text, emoji, photos, stickers, and watch cards only, by design.

17. Feedback, ideas & getting help

Something broken, something confusing, something you wish the app did? There's a person on the other end: @yumebee is the official YumeBee admin account, and it's there for exactly this. Please do reach out — a short message saying what happened is genuinely more useful to us than you'd think, and it's read by the people who build the app.

You add the admin the same way you'd add anyone: open Add friend, go to the By username tab, type yumebee, and send the request. Once it's accepted you have an ordinary chat — tell us what went wrong, what you were doing when it happened, and which phone you're on. Screenshots help.

Two things worth knowing before you write. That chat is an ordinary YumeBee chat, which means it is end-to-end encrypted like every other one — and it also means it disappears after 24 hours, same as everything else. So if you need a record of what you sent us, or you'd rather not say it in a chat at all, email admin@yumebee.app instead. And because we can't read your conversations, we can't look up what happened on our side — whatever you describe is what we have to work with.

One exception: if someone is harassing you or behaving unsafely, don't route it through the admin chat. Use Report inside the app instead — it goes straight to the people who action reports, and child-safety reports are escalated ahead of everything else.