Testing Badger

Before you start

Badger is in alpha. Most things work, some things won’t, and your feedback is the whole point — you’re helping shape what ships. Here’s how to get the most out of a test.

New in this build

Three things changed a lot since the last alpha. If you only have time for a few tests, make them these.

What to try

No need to do all of it — but the more corners you poke, the better. Each area links to the matching part of the Using Badger guide if you want the full how-to.

• Sign in & your profile. Sign in with Apple, Google, or an email magic link — there are no passwords, so tell us if anything ever asks you for one. Set a display name and avatar, and switch the theme between light, dark and system. You’ll also be asked to choose a plan — subscriptions aren’t live yet, so pick Try before you buy; tell us if Subscribe ever does anything other than say “not yet”. Getting started →
• Starting a conversation. Tap + and try all three routes: a new chat from your contacts, a new group, and enter a BadgerCode. If someone you know is missing from the contacts picker, that’s exactly the sort of thing we want to hear about — tell us how they’re stored (SIM card, Google account, no email address). Getting started →
• Feeds: chats & groups. Start a one-to-one chat and a group and confirm they look and behave the same — both a scrolling feed of posts. Try both posting styles (the post button and the expanding composer), flip a feed to scroll the other way, invite someone, promote a co-admin, and set a retention window. Watch the sending ticks go from sending → sent → read, like or delete a post from its action row, and go offline to see messages queue and send on reconnect. With a second device or a friend, start typing and confirm the typing indicator appears on the other side. Accept and decline things from your inbox, and rescind an invite you’ve sent from the sent-invites panel. Conversations & groups →
• Moods & status. Set a primary and secondary mood, a status emoji and a status line from the header at the top of a conversation — including one with no map, where the same header should appear without it. Swipe the header up to collapse it and down to expand it, and check your changes reach your friends and your widget. Moods & status →
• Archive & hide. Swipe a conversation left and Archive it; send it a new message and confirm it comes back on its own — unless you turned on Keep archived. Then swipe left → More → Hide, and reveal the hidden vault by pressing and holding the Badger logo at the top of your list: check it asks for Face ID or your passcode, and that a hidden conversation stays hidden even after a new message arrives. Also check that with Show Hidden on the hub off, nothing on the hub hints the vault exists. Conversations & groups →
• Posts. Write a post to a group, like it and tap the likes to see who reacted, quote a post (including one with a photo) by swiping it right, @mention someone, and open the ⓘ post-info sheet. If you’re an admin, pin and unpin a post. Posts →
• Formatting. Try the shortcuts — *bold*, _italic_, ==highlight==, headings, lists, quotes, links, @mentions and #hashtags — and watch the post composer render them live as you type. Press Return in a list or quote and check the next line carries on. Formatting your messages →
• Media & the paid gates. Send a photo or album, a video, a voice note, a file, a GIF and a sticker. Then push past the free limits on purpose: a video over 30 seconds (it should offer a trim), a file over 1 MB, a voice note over a minute, and a poll. Check every gate explains what will happen before it mentions money, and that backing out leaves your conversation exactly as it was. Media & sharing →
• Sharing into Badger. From another app, use the system Share sheet and pick Badger — try a link, a photo, a video, a file and a sound file. The last three are freshly fixed, so they’re especially worth a go; tell us if Badger isn’t offered as a destination, or if something arrives empty. Media & sharing →
• Feeds from the web. In a group you admin, open settings → Feeds and follow a Bluesky account, a subreddit or an RSS URL, then check their posts turn up in the group feed. As a member, tick and untick feeds and confirm muting one only hides it for you. This one’s still barely tested in the wild — tell us if a feed won’t load, renders oddly, or shows the wrong thing. Feeds from the web →
• Deleting. Press and hold your own message or feed post → confirm; on a feed post, try the 🗑 bin in the action row too. It should read “deleted” for everyone, with any photo or GIF gone too. Posts →
• Privacy: the three layers. This is the one we most want poked. In Settings → Privacy, switch off your location, mood, status, status emoji, read receipts or media saving and confirm no conversation can put them back — the per-conversation switch should be greyed out and say why. Then set them per conversation: share your mood in one group and not another, and check the map header’s 📍/🔒 matches what you chose. In a group, have an admin turn the group map off and confirm it disappears for everyone. In a 1:1 chat, confirm the map only appears once both of you have opted in. Finally switch on Ghost Mode and confirm you vanish from every map at once. Privacy: what you share →
• Does mutual really mean mutual? Stop sharing your own location and check you stop seeing other people’s. Same for mood, emoji, status and read receipts — if you don’t give it, you shouldn’t get it. If you ever find a one-way mirror, that’s a serious bug: tell us straight away. Privacy: what you share →
• Activity & battery. Turn on Settings → Activity and check it asks for Motion & Fitness once, and that saying no leaves the switch off rather than pretending. Then walk, cycle or drive and watch the icon on your marker and widget. Leave the app for twenty minutes mid-walk and come back: it should catch up, not reset you to “still”. With it switched off again, tell us whether your battery is noticeably better or worse over a day. Activity →
• The map. Open a conversation’s map and check you get a fresh position quickly rather than an old one. Check the map frames itself around your friends, tap a marker, and try the spider/cluster behaviour with a couple of people close together. The map →
• Notifications. In Settings → Notifications, turn individual kinds on and off — messages, mentions, replies, reactions, polls, invitations — and confirm you’re only pinged for the ones you left on. Then override a single conversation from its settings and check it wins over your account-wide choice. A notification should still name who it’s from and the kind of thing, never the actual contents. Notifications →
• Your devices & the web companion. Open Settings → Devices, rename this device, and try signing another one out. Then link the web companion: open Badger in a browser, and type the code it shows into Settings → Devices → Link a Companion App on your phone. Time how long it takes to settle. Older messages may say “waiting for a key” for a moment while the browser catches up — that part is expected — but tell us if they’re still waiting minutes later, or after you’ve foregrounded the app on your phone. If you can, note roughly when the messages were sent. Your devices & companions →
• Interests & ads. Open Settings → Interests and pick a few. Badger shows ads, and your interests are the only thing ever shared with advertisers — never your identity, location or messages. Choosing some makes what you see more relevant, and helps us test that side of things.
• Home-screen widget. Add the Badger widget to your phone’s home screen and check it shows your mood, status and unread/invite counts — then change your mood and confirm the widget updates. Home-screen widget →

Writing a report we can act on

Whichever route you use, a great report is short but specific. If you can, include:

• What you were doing — the steps that led up to it, so we can try to reproduce it.
• What you expected to happen.
• What actually happened instead.
• A screenshot or screen recording, if the problem is something you can see.
• Your device & OS — and, if you’re emailing rather than using the in-app button, your build number from the bottom of Settings.
• How often it happens — every time, or just now and then?

Good to know

• Things will change between builds. Layouts, wording and features are all still moving — that’s expected at this stage.
• Your phone is the full app; everything else is a companion. Badger in a browser reads and writes your conversations but shows a read-only map, never publishes your location and doesn’t get push notifications. That’s by design, not a bug. Mac and Windows companions are being built now — they’re not for testers yet.
• A newly linked companion can’t read old messages straight away. Linking hands over the keys for your conversations as they stand now; the keys for older messages have to be fetched from a device that already holds them. So a fresh browser showing “waiting for a key” on last week’s posts is expected, and it usually sorts itself out once your phone is awake and online. What isn’t expected is it never catching up — please report that.
• Re-linking isn’t free. Signing a device out and linking it again rotates the keys for every group you’re in, which makes a lot of work for everyone else’s devices. If your browser gets into a mess, tell us before you clear it and link again — we’d rather see the broken state than the tidied-up one.
• Nothing is on sale. Badger+ gates are live but the store isn’t, so the paywall is a dead end on purpose. It shouldn’t ever take your money or claim you’ve subscribed.
• Your mood isn’t end-to-end encrypted yet, and your location won’t be. Messages, photos, video, voice notes and files are, today. Your mood, status and emoji are mid-rollout: the scrambling runs already and the last step is switching the apps over to read it. Location is a deliberate exception — the parts of Badger that fetch your position while your phone is asleep can’t hold your keys, so it stays readable to us and we lean on collecting as little as possible instead: only while someone’s looking, only where you are now, never for ads. In Ghost Mode nothing leaves your phone at all.
• A few features are still on the way. Some things you might expect aren’t here yet — they’re being built for later releases.
• We can’t recover encrypted content. If keys are lost, messages can’t be brought back — so if something looks wrong with a conversation, tell us what you saw before clearing anything.

Send feedback

Anything at all — a crash, a confusing screen, a typo, or just an idea. We read every message, and early feedback carries the most weight.