The yumebee usage guide

1. Getting started

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 over WhatsApp. Type it in and you're in.

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. Search for someone by name or phone number, send a request, and once they accept, a conversation opens up automatically — there's no separate "start chat" step.

• 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.

Magic Connect — instant friends, in person

If you're standing next to each other, skip the request entirely. On the Add Friend screen, tap 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.
• If the spell fizzles ("Try bringing your phones together again"), just hold the phones closer for a second or two.
• Already friends? Magic Connect just drops you both into your existing chat.

3. Chatting — text, emoji & 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.

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.

Photos

Send a photo 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.
• 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.

6. Stickers, 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.

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.

7. 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, read receipts, and reactions, 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.

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.

8. 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, pick YumeBee, choose a friend or group, and it sends straight through the same encrypted pipeline as anything you'd send from inside the app.

9. 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.
• 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. 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 (see the recovery section below).

Preferences

• Theme & appearance — pick one of six colour palettes, plus a dark-mode toggle.
• Notifications — a single push-notifications on/off toggle. There's no alert-preview setting, because push notifications never contain your message content in the first place (see below).

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. This is a hard, irreversible delete: you 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.

10. 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.

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.

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.

11. 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).

12. Quick answers (FAQ)

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

How do I sign up for YumeBee?

Enter your phone number in the app. YumeBee sends a 6-digit one-time code over WhatsApp; enter it to sign in. No username or password at signup.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What happens if I lose my phone?

Signing in again on a new device replaces the old one automatically. 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.

Does YumeBee support voice or video calls?

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