Website revamp, outreach times, pinned messages

We've rebuilt our website from the ground up! The app behind it stays the same, but the website has gotten a long overdue polishing. Inside the app, you can now pin the messages and photos worth keeping, set the hours your companion is allowed to text you, and give yourself a backstory of your own.

A new website¶

The old homepage was a quick and dirty site we built as a gateway to our app. The new one is built around a revamped design which more accurately reflects the Embraces experience.

Below that we put the community front and centre, with real posts from our Discord users (join us on Discord!), a walkthrough of how creating a companion works, and an FAQ that answers the questions we commonly get asked.

Choose when your companion reaches out¶

The old check-ins toggle was all-or-nothing. It is now a weekly grid, so you can say your companion can message you on weekday evenings but leave you alone at 3am on a Tuesday. Set the whole week to Always, set it to Never, or paint in the hours that suit you and copy one day across the rest.

For the people who found check-ins a bit eager, they are also calmer now - let us know if you'd like more detailed check-in schedules.

Pin the messages you want to keep¶

Long-press a bubble, or right-click on desktop, and there is a Pin option now for both companion messages and photos. Pinned things collect on their own page, which sits right above Photos in the companion menu.

One thing worth knowing. Regenerating a reply rewrites the conversation from that reply onwards, so any pins sitting at or after it go too. We count them and tell you before you confirm, and anything pinned earlier in the chat is untouched.

Tell them a bit about you¶

Your companion has always had a backstory. Now you do too. There are two new optional boxes on your About you page, one for your backstory and one for a physical description, and whatever you write gets woven into how your companion talks to you, in text, on check-ins, and on calls. Write "you grew up in Penang and moved to Melbourne for uni, you're tall with a shaved head", and they will remember it without you having to drop it into conversation.

While we were in the profile pages we also made interests editable as chips, so tidying up your companion's likes is a couple of taps rather than a wall of text.

A new language, and companions who speak yours¶

Cantonese (粵語) joins the interface languages. And when you create a companion now, they are generated in whatever language you have set, so a French account gets a French companion out of the box instead of an English one you have to translate in your head.

Smaller things¶

• New here and staring at an empty Chats list? We now point you to Studio to make your first companion, instead of leaving you to find the little plus in the corner.
• You can save your card on a top-up and reuse it in one tap next time.
• Photos straight off your phone work now, including iPhone HEIC and burst-mode shots, and if a file is the wrong type or too big we say so in the upload box rather than failing silently.
• Prices show in US dollars, and the message costs on the paywall read more clearly.
• Buttons that kick off a request no longer fire twice if you're quick on the tap.
• Be excited - we've got a couple more cosmetic options coming up!

Enjoy Embraces? Tell a friend, or come say hello. We're on Discord and Reddit, and if you post a chat or a photo you love, drop your username so we can find you.