Questions & answers

Fair question — Badger doesn’t look quite like anything else on your phone, and that’s rather deliberate.

• At its heart Badger is two things rolled into one: a map with the people you care about on it, and a place to chat with them — in groups and one-to-one. Think of it less as a social network and more as a cosy back garden you only ever invite friends and family into.
• There’s no endless feed of strangers, no algorithm deciding who you should follow, no numbers going up. You add the people you actually want, and that’s the whole guest list. If they’re not in one of your groups or chats, they simply aren’t in your Badger.
• It’s properly private, too — every message, photo, video and file is end-to-end encrypted, so what happens in your Badger stays strictly between you and your people. Not us, not anyone.
• You can share your mood, what you’re up to, a little status, where you are — or none of it at all. It’s a gentle way to feel close to your people without having to message them every five minutes.

So that’s Badger: small, private, and made of only the people you’ve chosen. That really is the whole point.

Nope — and that isn’t us being modest. Badger is built so that we can’t, and that’s the single most important thing to understand about it.

• The rule is dead simple: the only people who can ever see anything you share in Badger are the people you chose to share it with. Not us, not an advertiser, not a government, not someone who ran off with our entire database. Nobody else, ever.
• And it isn’t just your messages — it’s everything. Your photos, your videos, your files, your voice notes, the lot. Every last byte is end-to-end encrypted: scrambled on your phone, and unscrambled only on the phones of the people you sent it to. Everywhere in between, our own servers included, it’s meaningless gibberish.
• Your location, mood, emoji and status are wrapped in that very same encryption, so the only friends who can see how you’re doing or where you are are the ones you’ve chosen.
• It’s locked with keys that only your own devices hold, using the same calibre of encryption banks and governments trust. Nobody can crack it — not us, not an advertiser, not a hacker holding our whole database. The gold standard for this is Signal and we are as secure as them. There’s simply nothing there for anyone to read, hand over, mine, or sell.

Privacy isn’t a box you tick in Badger — it’s the ground the whole thing stands on. It lives in the maths, not just in our good intentions.

🧪 Alpha note: in this alpha build your messages, photos, videos, files and voice notes are fully end-to-end encrypted today. Wrapping your location, mood, emoji and status in that same encryption is still rolling out and isn’t switched on yet — until it lands, those are shared only with your chosen people, but not yet encrypted.

We completely understand the worry — “share my location” sets off alarm bells, and quite rightly. But Badger works nothing like the creepy tracker you might be picturing.

• Nothing is ever quietly running in the background watching you. Badger only shares where you are in the moment when someone you’ve allowed is actually looking at the map — then it goes straight back to sleep. There’s no company dashboard watching your dot drift about all day, and the people you share with only ever see where you are now, never a trail of everywhere you’ve been.
• You’re in charge of every last bit of it. Share your location with one group but not another. Flip on Ghost Mode to vanish from the map entirely while still chatting away. Or share no location at all — plenty of people use Badger purely for the groups and the chat.
• Nobody can add you, follow you, or see you without you agreeing to it first. Badger is invite-only, everything is off until you switch it on — and your location is end-to-end encrypted, locked with keys only your own devices hold, so not even we can see where you are.

It’s really the opposite of being tracked: you decide who sees what, and when — and you can pull the plug whenever you like.

🧪 Alpha note: the controls above — sharing only when someone’s looking, per-group choices, Ghost Mode, invite-only — are all live in this alpha build today. The end-to-end encryption of your location is the one piece still rolling out; until it lands, your location is shared only with people you’ve allowed, but not yet encrypted.

If you want Badger maps to work with your friends Badger needs to you turn on Location Always in settings. However, there are two very important things to realise about this.

• Badger doesn’t actually use your location all the time. It sits in the background not using up any battery while it’s in your pocket, or you’re using other apps on your phone. Only if somebody in a group or a chat that you’re a member of is actively looking at the map for that group or chat, Badger gets a little background nudge to wake up and send your position so that they can know where you are. You can control how often it gets nudged in the Location part of your own settings. The default is once a minute which hardly uses any battery at all.
• This is all — like everything else in Badger — completely under your control. If you’ve turned off location sharing permissions in your settings or on one particular group or chat then Badger doesn’t get the nudge and doesn’t wake up. Same thing if you’ve turned on Ghost Mode. It only wakes up if somebody you have permitted to see your location is actively looking at the map. Nobody except those people you have agreed to share locations with can ever see your location.

We take privacy and security very seriously here at Badger. It’s safe, secure and private to set “Always” in the location settings on your phone — and it won’t eat your battery either!

They’re the gentle heartbeat of Badger — a way to say how you’re doing without having to actually say anything.

• Your mood is a colour and a feeling you can set — happy, frazzled, cosy, whatever fits. It tints your dot on the map so your people get a sense of how you are at a glance.
• Your status and activity fill in the picture — a little “at the gym”, “heads-down”, “on the train” — so friends know whether to wave or to leave you be.
• None of it is compulsory, and all of it is yours to control. Set as much or as little as you like, change it whenever the mood takes you, or show nothing at all.

It’s the difference between a map of dots and a map of people. That’s rather the magic of the thing.

Short version: the ads are about as nosy as a billboard on a bus stop — and you can switch them off entirely. Here’s the longer version.

• They’re not personalised. Badger explicitly asks the ad network for non-personalised ads. They aren’t built from a profile of your behaviour — they’re the same ads anyone with your chosen interests would see.
• The only hint they get is one you choose to give. In Settings you can tick a few broad interest areas — Sports, Music, Travel, that sort of thing — and those tick-boxes are the only signal that’s ever passed along, so the ads lean vaguely relevant instead of totally random. Tick nothing and they stay generic. That’s genuinely the whole of it.
• Your private life stays out of it. Ads are never based on your messages, your photos, or where you are. The only thing that ever leaves your phone for an ad is that short list of interest words — and since your messages and media are end-to-end encrypted, there’s nothing else there for anyone to mine even if they wanted to.
• No ad company gets to know you. We hand over your chosen interest words and nothing else — no name, no email, no contacts, no location, no identity.

And if you’d rather see none at all, Badger Plus clears them away completely. Ads are simply how we keep Badger free for everyone who’d rather not upgrade — never a reason to give your privacy away.

🧪 Alpha note: we’re still tuning the ads during the alpha, so you may spot test ads even though every tester is on Badger Plus right now — that won’t happen once we launch.

Yes — Badger is free to use, and the bits that matter most are free forever.

• Making groups and chats, seeing your people on the map, sharing your mood and location, going full Ghost — all free. No catch, no trial that quietly runs out.
• The free version shows the odd ad to help keep the lights on, and there’s an optional upgrade — Badger Plus — that clears them away and adds a few nice extras (longer videos, bigger files, polls). It’s there if you fancy it, and entirely skippable if you don’t.
• We’ll never lock your friends, your messages, or your privacy behind a paywall. The important stuff is free because that is the whole point of Badger.

So: free to use, with a little upgrade for anyone who wants to go further. No pressure either way.

🧪 Alpha note: during the alpha everyone’s on Badger Plus for free, and the purchase flow isn’t switched on yet — and you may spot the odd ad even on Plus while we’re testing them.

Badger has to keep the lights on somehow, and we’d far rather that came from the people who love it than from quietly harvesting everyone’s data. So the free version carries a few ads, and Badger Plus takes them away and throws in some nice extras besides.

• No ads. The obvious one — Badger Plus is completely ad-free.
• Longer videos — send clips up to five minutes, instead of thirty seconds.
• Bigger files — attach up to 10 MB rather than 1 MB.
• Longer voice notes — up to ten minutes, for when a text just won’t do.
• Polls — ask your group a question and let everyone tap their answer.

And because it’s us, the ads on the free version are kept well clear of your private life: they’re never built from your messages — we genuinely couldn’t read them if we tried. Upgrading just means you’d rather not see ads at all, and fancy a few extra bits while you’re there.

You can upgrade any time from Settings, and the price you see is always your own app store’s real, local price — never a number we’ve plucked out of the air.

🧪 Alpha note: during the alpha, every tester is on Badger Plus for free so you can try the lot — the real purchase flow isn’t switched on yet. And while we’re busy testing ads you may still see them even on Plus, which certainly won’t happen once we launch.

Nope — there’s no big search box full of strangers, and that’s very much on purpose.

• Badger only ever connects people who’ve actually chosen to connect. Somebody sends you an invite, you accept, and now you’re in each other’s world. No requests from people you half-remember, no “people you may know”, no being findable by anyone who happens to type your name or email.
• How do we know who you know? This is a hard problem and we’ve settled on the “circle of trust” being your contacts. If you’ve got somebody in your contacts and there is an email attached, you probably know them. Hard to be certain but this is where we have settled.
• It means you can’t be added, followed, or stumbled upon by a stranger. The only way someone ends up in your Badger is because one of you invited the other, and the other said yes.
• There is one way for strangers to get in touch with you. Every user has a BadgerCode. You can find it on your settings screen (tap your avatar or name on the hub screen). It’s a six character code — A to Z and 2 to 9 which stops those pesky 0 and 1 being mistaken for a 0 and I. You can attach that to your signature on emails or posts on other social media sites (”Contact Me on Badger: ABCD45”) and people can ask to chat with you. They don’t see any of your information at all until you accept the invite. Don’t want to talk to them? Don’t accept.
• Yes, it’s a touch more deliberate than tapping “follow”. But that little bit of friction is exactly what keeps Badger feeling like your people — not the whole internet.

Being un-searchable isn’t a missing feature. It’s one of the best things about the place.

They’re close cousins, and the honest answer is: not much — it mostly comes down to how many people are in the room.

• A chat is a one-to-one conversation — just you and one other person. A quiet word between the two of you. Share some jokes, set up a meeting, discuss politics. Like a DM in BlueSky but fully encrypted like Signal.
• A group is the very same idea with more people in it — a family, a five-a-side team, a book club, whoever. Everyone in the group shares the same messages, the same map, the same little moods and statuses. Think of a group like a little social media site that just contains the people that you know and like. Again, only those people in the group can read the messages and see the photos.
• Everything else behaves identically in both: they’re private to the people in them, your messages, your pictures and GIFs, your location is shared only on the terms you choose, and you can slip into Ghost Mode in either one.

So don’t overthink it — a chat is really just the smallest possible group. Start one with a friend, or gather your people into a group; Badger doesn’t much mind which.

However, you can’t invite people to a Chat. But that’s more privacy and security. If you’re chatting one to one with somebody, you don’t want the other person to have invited somebody else to listen in.

Ghost Mode is Badger’s “I’m here, but leave me be” button — and it’s one of our favourite little touches.

• Switch on Ghost Mode and you disappear from every map everywhere completely. Even if you’ve previously agreed to share location. Your friends can still chat with you, you’re still very much part of your groups — you’re just not showing up as a dot anywhere. Like slipping off to a quiet corner of the party without actually leaving.
• It’s instant and it’s total. While you’re a ghost, Badger parks your location (at the North Pole: say “hi” to Santa) and shares nothing at all — not an approximate location, not a “last seen”, nothing. And you can flit in and out of it whenever the mood takes you.

Some days you want your people to know where you are and what you’re doing. Some days you really don’t. Ghost Mode is there for the second kind of day.

Another fair FAQ (FFAQ?) — it sounds like we want to count your steps, and we honestly don’t. Here’s what it’s actually for.

• It’s how your marker knows whether you’re still, walking, running, cycling or driving — the little activity your friends see beside you on the map. Your phone already works this out with a tiny, low-power motion chip; Badger just reads the one-word answer (“walking”), never the raw sensor stream.
• It’s also one of Badger’s better battery savers. Knowing you’re sitting still lets Badger ease off the GPS until you’re moving again, instead of waking the satellites every minute regardless — and GPS is the hungry part.
• It never leaves your phone. Those motion readings are turned into a single word — your current activity — on your device, and only that word is ever shared, with the same people who already see you on the map. No step counts, no history, nothing sent to us.

And if you’d rather not, nothing breaks: Badger just falls back to guessing your activity from GPS, which is a touch less accurate and a little heavier on the battery. Your call, like everything in Badger.