The clock means nothing could carry it yet. It is on this device, sealed, and nothing has been handed to anyone. There is no need to resend it.
CHANNEL tries again every 30 seconds while the app is open, when you bring the app forward, when you tap Check Now, and when you open the conversation. If the contact's lights are all dark, nothing has changed yet at their end. If a radio light is lit and the message still waits, that contact's Internet Fallback time has not run out yet: the message is holding out for the radio. Set that contact to At Once on their page if you would rather it went by the internet straight away.
One tick means this device handed the message to something. Two means the other phone said it got it. A message can sit on one tick for two quite different reasons, and Settings › Diagnostics › Performance tells you which in about a minute. What every number on it means.
Look on the phone that was meant to receive, under Delivery receipts:
A second tick is the only thing missing in all three cases. The message itself is on their phone in the first two.
A photo goes as a run of slices, and the bar under it counts them. The bar alone cannot tell you which of those two is happening, so there is a line underneath it that can:
Neither line means the photo arrived. That is the ticks' job: one tick that never becomes two is a photo that has not landed, and no progress bar can say otherwise.
A small attachment overtaking a large one is normal. A voice note arriving before a photo you sent first is the slicing working, not a fault.
If CHANNEL can see that a card's key belongs to somebody else, it says so above the message box. Nothing you did caused it and nothing is lost by acting on it: Link to Someone, on that card, starts the pairing again and your conversation stays exactly as it is. What you give up is the link — you wait for them to accept again.
A second notice in the same place says that messages sent this way are not reaching somebody, because their app says it cannot read them. CHANNEL is repairing the link with them by itself. If that does not work, it asks you on that notice for a new link, and Share Invite Link sends the invitation. The conversation stays as it is.
Use it when messages in one thread stop arriving and every other thread is fine. If every thread is affected, it is a path problem, not a key problem: see the clock and one-tick sections above.
On Android, Settings › Reach shows a line under the Bluetooth switch:
The iPhone does not show this line. If one phone shows B and the other does not, wait a few seconds and look again: a light goes dark five minutes after the other phone was last heard from.
That person has chosen not to show you their reachability, so your app draws no route letters, route marks or nearby hints for them. Messages to and from them go the same way as for anyone else, and the ticks still show. It is a choice about what the app displays, not a guarantee against a modified copy of the app. You can make the same choice for them with Show My Reachability to on their page.
You accepted, and the other phone has not been reachable since. Pairing finishes when both phones are next reachable, whether nearby or both able to reach our server. You can leave the screen; it is not stuck. Cancel it if you no longer want it. A pairing also waits when the other phone runs an older CHANNEL than the pairing needs; once that phone updates from the store, it finishes.
Not from the pairing: every contact is Linked, because pairing proves a phone holds the keys and never who is holding that phone. Call them, or message them on something else, and ask them to read back the last thing you sent. Only the person you are actually paired with can. See Pairing.
Writing to someone at a number leaves an invitation in a slot only that number's owner can collect. Nothing tells you whether anyone will. If they have not verified that number in CHANNEL, they will never see it. Try another value, or send them a pairing code some other way.
If a request arrives from a number you already have, accepting it attaches the key to the existing contact rather than making a second one. A second key for the same name that you did not expect is worth a question.
There is no way in. The PIN is never stored, so nobody, us included, can reset it. Delete and reinstall CHANNEL, then restore from a backup if you made one.
Check that the key was pasted whole and belongs to the provider chosen above it. Settings › AI Features › Get a key at … opens that provider's own key page. A key from one provider never works on another.
Tell us. Include the phone model and what you were doing; leave out anything you would not want in an email.
It clears when everything is read, including a message that arrived while the app was already open. If it stays, open the conversation that still shows as unread.
The card on the Settings page reports the last time CHANNEL was stopped without being asked. An ordinary app update does not count. Clear makes it stay gone.
Until the phone has been unlocked once after restarting, it keeps CHANNEL's keys and messages locked away, from CHANNEL too. On iPhone a notification in that time can say only that a message is waiting; on Android nothing arrives until the unlock. Unlock the phone once and everything waiting comes in. Nothing is lost.
This device could not write your newest messages to its storage. Everything on screen is still there while CHANNEL stays open. Send a report from Settings › Diagnostics › Performance: its Saves line says what failed, which is what fixes it. Under the line, Reason: names the stage and the field that failed, never a message. When CHANNEL has set aside a copy of your messages it could not read, Store Diagnostics appears under Diagnostics and lists the copies; they are kept, not deleted.
On iPhone, when the device's Keychain is not answering, Setup and the Messages list say This device's Keychain is not answering, and that CHANNEL cannot save anything on this launch. Restart the device. If it stays, tell us.
On iPhone, when something can only be fixed in the system's Settings, the notice has Open Settings, which opens CHANNEL's own page there. It is offered when the microphone is refused for a voice message, when location is refused for a shared location, and when speech recognition is refused for a transcript.
English is the reference text; any translation is a convenience.
CHANNEL