A new install opens on Setup, and it asks two things.
The name box stops at 24 characters and counts them. Back on the second step returns to the first with your name still there. Nothing is asked of the system during Setup: notifications are asked for after you send your first message, Nearby devices (Android) when you first open a conversation or Link in Person, and the microphone and camera when you place or answer a call or take a picture, each with a sentence first. Say no and CHANNEL does not ask again by itself; it offers Settings when you do something that needs it. The keyboard's return key continues, like Continue. The first screen shows the app icon and the CHANNEL wordmark. Set Up How People Find You is the quieter button, and Start Using CHANNEL is the one filled button.
The free trial, on an app installed from the App Store or Google Play. When the store offers this account a free trial, Setup ends with it: the title says how long it is (Start your 2 months free, in the store's own words), with the price after the trial, the date nothing is charged until, and how to cancel in your App Store or Google Play subscriptions. Start Free Trial opens the store's own sheet for the monthly plan, which asks for a payment method; Other Plans shows the yearly and family plans; Restore Purchases is there for a subscription you already have; and Not Now goes straight into the app. Without a subscription, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, the local network and receiving all work, and the first time something would need the Internet, the conversation says so with a way to subscribe. Beta and test versions skip this step.
Finish Later is in the bar on every step on iPhone, the name step included, and from the second step on Android. It closes Setup and keeps your place: open the app again and Setup resumes there. Proving a number needs the internet, so a phone with none can still get into the app.
Everything else starts at its default and is in Settings under the same names: how messages travel, how new messages are fetched (Push), the lock, calls, AI and maps. Each has its own page here.
If you have used CHANNEL before, you are never dropped into Setup. It is for a phone that has just installed the app.
A profile is a separate identity: its own keys, its own contacts, its own conversations. Two profiles on one phone share nothing unless you choose to see their conversations in one list (Settings › Privacy › Merge Profiles). Nobody you talk to can tell that two profiles share a phone.
Which profile you are in is named at the top of the screen, under the CHANNEL wordmark, whenever there is more than one. It is there so that who you are writing as is never something you have to remember. A profile's name is at most 24 characters, so it fits the banner that names it when a message arrives. It is also the name on the profile's own card: renaming the profile renames the card, and changing the name on your card renames the profile. Create one from Settings › Profiles. The New Profile sheet offers two ways under Set Up: Interview asks the same two questions for this profile, and Manual creates it and leaves everything at its default. The tenth profile is asked the same way the first one was.
A new profile can start as a copy of an existing one, settings only. Keys, contacts, messages and verification are never copied, because a profile that shared them would not be a separate identity. On a new profile's first step, Cancel goes back to the profile you came from and discards the unfinished one.
Your card is the name and picture contacts see, and it is sent to them directly, sealed, when you pair. It is never uploaded anywhere. Change it under Contacts › This is me.
Your own profile wears a Me badge beside its name in Messages and Contacts. It is the card whose notes never leave the phone.
Your card also lists which calling apps are on each of your numbers, pre-ticked from what is installed. That goes to the people you have paired with, so their phone offers the right app instead of guessing. Untick any you would rather not share.
Choose a name you are happy for other people to read. Everyone you pair with sees it, whichever of you wrote first, and when you write to somebody new it is the name their phone offers them for you before they have met you. If you change it later, the new one goes out to everyone you are already paired with. A nickname you meant only for yourself is not private once you have paired with anybody.
Sharing your card. You can share your own card and choose which lines go — the name, each number, each address, each handle. You cannot share somebody else's card: their details are theirs to give. Notes never leave this device, on anybody's card. What CHANNEL promises is only that it will not be the one handing a detail over; anyone can still write a number down off a screen. Your handle, once claimed, sits on the card as a row of its own beside your numbers and addresses.
When a contact asks to give your card to somebody else, a Decide row appears in that conversation. Tick the lines you are willing to send and tap Send These, or tap No: nothing is sent until you decide, and the lines you leave ticked go to that third person together, so tick only what you would give them yourself.
Leaving the edit screen with something unsaved asks first, and discarding it loses everything you typed there, including a number or address you just verified.
A contact has a First and a Last name. Two given names go in First; two surnames go in Last. Tap More name options for a middle name, a prefix, a suffix or a nickname; it opens on its own once one of them already holds something. If the same person is paired in two of your profiles, editing the name, numbers, notes or picture in either profile updates the other; each profile's own name for them, and its own pairing, stay separate.
There are two ways to reach somebody:
1.
CHANNEL never uploads contacts. Contacts › Phone can show your device's own address book so you can find somebody without retyping them, and that list is read only while the tab is open, is never saved, and never leaves the phone. Only a person you choose to import becomes a CHANNEL contact.
Contacts › Invite a Friend shares your own CHANNEL link, and lists the people in your address book, under your CHANNEL contacts, each with Invite. Invite leaves an invitation at their number, the same as writing to any number does (see Being found), and opens a text message, or an email for somebody with only an address, that says where to get CHANNEL and how to reach you in it, ready for you to send. On a device that cannot send texts, a person with only a number shows This device cannot send text messages. and Invite is off for them; use Share Invite Link instead. Somebody already a paired contact of yours does not need an invitation and is left off this list. Your address book is read only while you are on the Contacts tab, once you have allowed it, and only the name and the number or address you invite are kept, as a contact waiting to pair.
When two phones pair, each sends the other its card, and the name on it fills in the contact if you have not typed one. From then on the rule is simple: a name you typed is yours, and a name you never typed follows theirs. If you edit the name on somebody's card, their later changes never overwrite it. If you never did, and they rename themselves, your card updates as it did the first time. Their numbers, addresses and calling apps keep updating either way, because those are theirs to change.
On the edit screen the Name box and the First and Last parts are two ways of writing one name. Fill the parts and the name is written for you. Type in the Name box instead and it is used exactly as you typed it, and the parts are cleared rather than guessed at.
On a contact's card, Block and Unblock sit in the Danger Zone, directly above Delete Contact, and both are drawn red. Block and Delete Contact ask first.
Tap a contact's photo on their page to see it full screen. Pinch or double-tap to zoom, drag to move it around, and swipe down or tap Close to leave. Your own photo on your own card opens the same way. Initials and stock faces are not photos and do not open.
To show a different photo for somebody, tap Edit, then their picture, and choose a photo, a camera shot or a face. Only this phone shows it: it is never sent to them or to anyone, and it is not part of your own card. It replaces theirs everywhere you see them, and when they change their own photo, yours stays. Remove Custom Photo puts their own photo back at once, and if they changed it meanwhile you see the new one. While yours is set, View Their Own Photo on their page opens theirs.
On a phone, Messages and Contacts each open what you tap. On a window wide enough (a foldable opened, a tablet), Messages shows the list beside the open conversation and Contacts the list beside the card, so you can move between people without going back. Fold or unfold and the conversation you were reading stays where you can see it. Nothing else changes.
If it does something, it is drawn as a control rather than as a line of text, and its shape says how much weight it carries:
So a destructive action never looks like the sentence explaining it, and you can tell what a control will cost before you press it.
The tabs at the bottom stay in place everywhere except three screens: pairing, sending an invitation, and editing a card. Those are the places where leaving half-way would lose what you were doing, so the bar steps aside until you finish or cancel.
Five tabs, on every screen: Messages, Calls, Contacts, Updates and your profile. Help opens from the top of Settings, as Help and Documentation. Calls lists the calls made and received, and tapping one opens the conversation it belongs to, because that is where the call is already recorded.
Lists have no buttons on the rows. The menu is under a long press, on both phones.
The first time this matters, a hint says so once and then retires itself.
Two of those are easy to confuse. Clear Messages empties the conversation and keeps everything else: the person stays in your list, you stay paired, and their next message arrives in the same thread. Delete removes the thread itself; the person stays a contact. Neither can be undone, and neither reaches the other person's phone.
English is the reference text; any translation is a convenience.
CHANNEL