What has changed

I have changed how chats work on a larger screen, because the column I built earlier made a chat feel like a place you had to go to. Chats now open as small windows along the bottom, the way a messenger does: the tab grows into the window where it sits, so you never see a chat and its own tab at the same time, and you can have several open side by side while the map and the Live sidebar stay where they are. If there is no room for another, the oldest one shrinks back into its tab. Click a window's name to fold it away, and click the tab to bring it back. Escape does the same from the message box. If your device is set to reduce motion, the growing and shrinking are skipped.

The X on a window now closes the chat. It leaves your tab row and waits under Closed chats, exactly as before, and a new message still will not reopen it behind your back. Hover over a chat tab, or tab to it with the keyboard, and a small X appears so you can close it without opening it first; on a touch screen it is always there, just small. The separate Close chat button has gone from larger screens.

The column is still there, but now it is only for managing chats: your list with Closed chats, joining nearby rooms and bridging two places. Opening a chat from that list opens a window and leaves the list where it is. A button on each window can send that one chat to the column if you would rather read it there, and a button in the column sends it back. On a medium screen the column still takes the sidebar's place, with the same swap button. Phones are unchanged. What I have not solved is that with the list open on a 1280 pixel screen there is room for only one window, so the others fold into their tabs. I would like to hear whether that is the right trade.

I have built a page that shows what has been happening on Together in the last two hours, for live.to.gether.earth once I have set up its address. It is a list, newest first, and it reads without any script. It tells you when people arrived, though never who: a minute with fewer than three arrivals is just "a few people arrived", and a bigger one says "5 people arrived, from Lagos, Lima and Sheffield", with the places in alphabetical order and no count for any one of them. Waves between places, a chat bridge being opened between two countries and a regional chat room becoming active show up the same way. Alongside them it notes the sun reaching large cities (rounded to the quarter hour), the warmest and coldest of a sample of large cities, how many airline flights and ships are showing, and the Moon that everyone shares. Every line says where it came from and links each place to the full map.

I have been careful about what this is. It does not name or rank anyone, count anything for popularity, or keep more than the last 200 events for two hours, and there are no cookies or analytics on it. It is not an endless scroll. The same picture is available as JSON at /api/v1/public/moments, described on the developers page. I have not built a live stream, because it would tie up the server for every open tab, so the page quietly refreshes itself every minute while you are looking at it. On a quiet day most of it will say "a few", which is the point. What is still to come: the address itself, and your view on whether three is the right number for naming a place.

I have built a lighter version of Together for when you are away from home, on a slow connection, or paying for every megabyte. It lives at lite.to.gether.earth (once I have set up its address) and is the same Together with the map and globe left out: plain text you can read before any script runs, in a few kilobytes. It shows how many people are on the map and the places they are in, listed alphabetically with counts and never names, where your own connection seems to be with the same one tap to stop sharing it, and a plain form that compares any two places: the distance, both clocks, when you are both awake, daylight, season and the Moon. You can still appear with a first name and open community chat. The full site stays the real one, and every lighter page has a "Full site" link back to it.

It only ever moves you there if your browser explicitly asks to save data, and choosing the full site is remembered so I do not send you back. Otherwise, if your connection looks slow or you seem to be in a different country from your remembered place, the Live panel offers it once. "Stay here" is remembered on your device and I will not ask again. The lighter site has no analytics at all and the same privacy rules. What is not there: the map, the globe, the data room and the phone remote. Because your browser keeps its choices separately for each address, your privacy choices, name and sign-in start afresh over there. I have measured the lite home at about 4 KB compressed (page and stylesheet); the script that adds chat and sign-in is much heavier because it still needs React, which I want to slim down next.

I've opened a small public data API for anyone who wants to build with Together's places. It is free, needs no key and only reads. You can search coarse places, find the ones nearest a point, read the facts Together holds about a place, and ask for its weather, the height of the land, its local time, daylight and Moon, and how many people are on the map right now. Every answer says where it came from, under what licence and what credit to show, and each dataset keeps its own licence. The map count shows only places with at least three people, and never a name, a trail or a member. I do not keep anyone's address: the limit of 60 requests a minute is counted against a hash that changes every day. The details are on the developers page. It is early, so please tell me what is missing. Venue data from Sheff.events will come later, through a separate contract.

Once the flat map has drawn and your browser has nothing else to do, Together now quietly fetches the 3D globe's code and its two small landscape images, so the first time you switch to the globe there is less to wait for. It skips this if you have asked your browser to save data, your connection is very slow, or your device looks modest. The images are also decoded away from the main part of the page where your browser allows it, so the map should stay smoother while the globe loads. On phones and other modest devices the globe now draws at a lower pixel density and does not download the largest landscape image, which saves about 420 KB and some memory at the cost of a slightly softer picture. I have measured this in a desktop browser only, so I will keep checking it on real phones and adjust.

The stylesheet every page waits for is now about 28 per cent smaller (23.5 KB down to 16.8 KB compressed). The styles for accounts, chat, the site tour and the data room used to be bundled into every page; they now arrive with those parts of the site, and the data room's styles load only on the rankings page. Reading pages should start to paint a little sooner. The chat and account buttons appear when their code loads, as before. The saved offline study page still includes every stylesheet. If you see anything that looks unstyled for a moment, please tell me.

If you turn the bell on for a chat, Together can now tell you when someone writes in it, even if you are looking at another chat or another tab. The page title and the little icon in your browser tab show how many unread messages are waiting in chats with their bell on, and nothing else: no other chat adds to that number. Your browser asks for permission once, when you first turn a bell on, and I never ask when the page loads. If you already have bells on and have not allowed alerts in this browser, the chat list shows one line with a button. Tabs you are not looking at now check for news every 15 seconds instead of every few seconds, which is gentler on your battery and on my server. Alerts only arrive while Together is open in a tab; I have not built alerts for a closed browser yet.

On a wide screen, an open chat now sits in its own column next to the Live sidebar, so you can read a conversation and keep exploring the map at the same time. On a medium-width screen there is room for only one of the two, so the chat takes the sidebar's place and a small button swaps them back. Phones are unchanged. The chat tabs along the bottom are still where you open a chat. The old expand button is gone on larger screens because the column does that job.

Every chat now has a Close chat button. It tucks the chat out of your tab row and into a Closed chats list at the bottom of your chat list. Nothing is deleted and nobody is told. If you had its bell on you will still get an alert when a new message arrives, and the list shows how many messages are waiting, but the chat stays closed until you open it again yourself. Pen-pal chats can be closed as well, as a gentler alternative to deleting them.

When I am around to chat, I can now tell the map. For up to four hours, while I am on it, the Live tab shows one quiet line: "A host is on the map now. Open your city chat to say hello." It has a button to open the chat list. It shows no name and no count, and it never appears unless I switch it on myself. I also built a way for me to hear when someone new appears; that is for me only and does not notify you. I will keep it small and see whether it helps anyone say hello.

I have made the globe check which city dots and connection arcs are in view with less work as you turn and zoom. Their positions and appearance stay the same. I will keep checking this on slower devices.

I have made the city grouping switch actually gather nearby dots into population-sized markers on the zoomed-out map. Terrain and landscape colouring now start off, including for people with the earlier saved default, and live connection arcs stay visible without a switch. You can still turn terrain on when you want it. I will keep refining how the grouped cities look on different screens.

I found that some media-server responses are missing a browser header, which makes the map retry files it can already get from Together. After the first failed request, the page now uses its own copies for the rest of that visit. The map remains available while I sort out the media-server configuration.

I have made city dots vary more clearly with population at closer zooms. The largest glows are bounded so they do not wash over neighbouring places. I will keep checking the balance on busy parts of the map.

I have moved the open comparison to the top of Connect, with the place search behind a clear button and the sharing tools together beneath the heading. I have given the narrower sidebar more space for both place names.

I have tidied up the icon and added the iPhone home-screen settings, so Together opens as its own app when you add it from your browser. The map and saved public study material can be available offline, while live people and chats still need a connection. I will keep checking how the installed version feels on different phones.

I have added a quiet family of sounds for map details, waves, new pen pal connections and different chat rooms. They use the same tone in different short patterns, so you can tell them apart without a loud alert. Sounds are off until you turn them on with the speaker button at the top, and your choice stays on this device. I will keep adjusting the balance as people try it.

I have moved the Ace Media Discord update to once every three hours. It now shows how many people have joined and how much public conversation happened in that period, alongside the number currently on the map. When someone chooses analytics, Together also keeps short-lived hourly counts of page views, shares and sign-ins for this update. The bot still shares no names, places, message text or report details. Google Analytics and Clarity remain optional, and their separate reports are not copied into Discord.

I have added private counts for people on the live map and recent activity in public chats, sign-ups and reports, so I can see whether this first test is working and whether anything needs my attention. If you choose analytics, Together now counts public page views, successful sign-ins, confirmed sign-ups and shares without sending names, places or conversations as events. I have masked the account and chat panels in Clarity and updated the Privacy page to explain this. A counts-only ten-minute summary also goes to my Ace Media Discord channel through the existing bot, without names, places, message text or report details.

I have fixed the sign-in button after a password change so it opens the form instead of an empty account panel. I have also made the Safety and Privacy pages clearer about exploring without an account, choosing a temporary name and confirming you are an adult. I still need an independent UK legal review before inviting a wider audience.

I have fixed the emailed password link so it opens the new-password form even when confirming your email has already signed you in. Once you change it, Together signs out the earlier session and offers a clear way back to sign in.

I have made the logo take you back to an overview centred on the places you are comparing, or on your broad place when there is no current comparison.

I have updated account confirmation and password reset emails with the current Together mark, the site's colours and a clearer link. The message still includes plain text if your email app cannot show the styled version.

I have written down the rules for conversations, how I handle reports, how quickly I aim to respond, and how to ask me to reconsider a decision. Reports still come to me, and the admin queue records what I do. I still need an independent UK legal review before inviting a wider audience.

I have updated the Safety, Privacy and How it works pages to explain the return choice for named Live now visitors and the current account signup route. The old wording described an earlier version of the site. I still need to publish a report response time and written rules with an appeal route before inviting a wider audience.

I have added small invitations in Connect, Live and You to make it easier to appear at a broad place or find a conversation. The chat links open the available rooms when chat is enabled, or take you to the privacy choice when it is not.

When you choose to appear by name, this device now remembers that choice, your broad place and your adult confirmation. You can return without repeating the form while Live now location sharing is on. Leave stops future returns; leave and forget clears your saved name and place. Signed-in members still use their account's map setting. I will keep refining where these invitations are useful.

I have stopped the Connect panel from moving the map away from the view you saved when you return. The globe now eases back into the same place, zoom, direction and tilt. Opening a shared place link still takes you to the places in that link. I will keep checking how this feels across browsers.

I have steadied the globe's background while detailed terrain arrives, so it does not change shape just because one tile has loaded. Detailed child tiles now wait for their graphics textures before replacing a parent. I still want to see how this feels on different graphics hardware.

I have made the map remember its last view on this device, including the globe's place, height, direction and tilt. Reloading now returns you to that view. I will keep checking that this feels natural when switching between the flat map and globe.

I have added Control or Shift and trackpad scrolling for tilting the globe, with two visible tilt buttons as another way to set the view. Pinching still zooms. This should make the globe easier to explore on Macs where Control-click opens a context menu. I still want to check the feel on a real Firefox and Mac trackpad.

I have made new map detail arrive from the place you zoom towards, spreading outwards as you explore. The map now keeps a little detail ready beyond the screen, draws terrain shading between frames, and shows a small globe beside the logo while tiles load. I have also made the map follow the sidebar more gently and use smaller WebP files for night lights when they save space. I will keep measuring how this feels on slower devices.

I have moved the public map files to the media CDN, so opening and exploring the map can load them without asking the main site server for every file. The site keeps a local copy to fall back to if the media service is unavailable, and saved offline study still works. I will keep an eye on loading times as more places are explored.

I have made the account form's soft background fill its side of the window, and centred shorter forms so they are easier to follow. An expanded chat now takes the map's space while leaving the right panel available for exploring and sending a place into the conversation. The chat's alerts and expand controls sit together as icons. I will keep refining both layouts on smaller screens.

I have put the to.gether.earth mark on the sharing cards, with its larger dots and a clear space between the bridge and the letters. The main card now follows the line from London to New York, while a comparison still shows the two places you chose. New share links use a refreshed card address so they can pick up the new image. Posts already made elsewhere may keep their earlier preview.

I have given the world data page room for its ranking and chart, and fixed narrow screens that pushed the Sources and phone remote pages sideways. The You, Connect and Live panels now link to the relevant reading pages. I will keep refining these pages as the data grows.

I have brought the visitor name and Live now choices into one section of You. You can save a chat name or appear on the map from the same field. I have also made an open chat take the actual place of its bottom tab. I will keep checking how both feel on smaller screens.

I have renamed Here to Live, because the people shown can be anywhere. Live now also offers a short list of active place conversations you can choose to open. The chat expand button is now an icon, and expanding a chat fills the map's main side panel. I will keep refining what is useful to show as more places join in.

I have added an optional tour of the map, search, panels, conversations and sharing. It is offered once on this device, can be skipped at any point, and can be replayed with the Tour button. I hope it makes the first visit easier; I will keep refining the guide as the map grows.

I have changed the chat dock so an open conversation takes the place of its bottom tab. Avatars now sit beside the pointed edge of a message, names start the message, and times read in short form. This leaves the map visible beside the chat and makes conversations easier to scan. I will keep checking the layout on smaller screens.

I have brought the two visitor name boxes into one field in You, so the name you choose can be used in community chat and when you appear on Live now. I have also kept You, Connect and Here on the map when the sidebar is closed, and made the active tab move smoothly as you switch. I will keep refining how these controls feel on smaller screens.

I have added public chat bridges between two whole countries. You can open one or deliberately join one from its map arc. Messages are screened and disappear after seven days, just like other place chats. People who chose places at either end help a bridge stand out, while anyone may join without being labelled by origin. I will keep checking how these rooms work for people before opening the beta more widely.

I have changed the logo in the site header to read to.gether.earth. The two larger full stops now hold the small bridge over “gether”, bringing the familiar symbol into the name itself. I have cleared the curve around the letters and dots so it stays behind them. The sharing images still use the earlier mark; I will update those once the new card design is settled.

I have added email confirmation for people joining without an invitation, and a one-use password reset link for existing members. A new public account stays closed until its owner confirms the email address. I will open public registration only after the new domain and the live email journey have been checked together; existing invite links continue to work in the meantime.

I have split the town catalogue into geographic chunks, loaded one at a time around the map view. Town dots and local shapes arrive with a short staggered fade; reduced-motion settings show them straight away. The flat map now uses one shape level at a time: city shapes with town dots, then local shapes with city dots.

Public place records, facts and outlines are saved on your device for offline study, with their cache dates shown when you are offline. Facts refresh after 30 days and outlines after seven days, but expiry or a failed refresh does not erase your last saved copy. Once the Offline study panel says the page is ready, you can reopen it without a connection, search towns in saved chunks and read saved reference material. You can clear that study data from the panel. The browser may reclaim storage, and unsaved material, photographs, recordings and live features still need a connection. Chats, accounts and live visitors are not saved in this cache.

I have also softened the city-light edges and made the globe's low-resolution night imagery fade before close zoom stretches it into large pixels. City markers keep their population-based sizes.

I have kept the privacy choices above the chat tabs and study control, so the buttons remain reachable on a phone.

I have made distant city dots smaller, with a clearer population-based size difference in both map views. Their sizes blend as you zoom, and cities stay more prominent than smaller places when those appear.

On the flat map, a matching city shape now replaces its dot earlier, while smaller places remain dots until closer zooms. When smaller shapes take over from an oversized city shape, its city-centre dot returns for orientation. Dots inside shapes remain clickable. This still depends on complete, matching local boundaries being available; I do not invent missing outlines or show country borders.

I found that a dense boundary response could discard every area instead of keeping the complete shapes that fitted. I have narrowed the nearby lookup and fixed that limit. Hyphens and spaces in place names now match consistently, so a sourced village shape can replace its dot. Zooming inside a village also keeps its shape until a smaller area can take over. A slow lookup no longer pauses every other town, although provider-wide limits still apply. Coverage still depends on the available mapping, and a provider outage can still leave dots visible temporarily.

When the provider times out, I now reuse available cached local outlines for up to 30 days instead of throwing them away. Older cached country and regional borders are filtered out before reuse.

Clicking a smaller area now selects that area before its containing city, including when the smaller place has no matching catalogue dot.

Existing outlines also stay on the map while the next nearby lookup loads, so moving between places does not blank shapes we have already fetched.

I have made complete local boundaries into clickable shapes as the flat map gets closer. A city can give way to smaller areas when it becomes too large for the view. City dots and labels are stronger than smaller-place markers while both are visible, and parent-city dots disappear at very close zoom. Country and unclassified state or province borders are excluded; the world map remains about land and people, not national dividing lines.

These shapes depend on OpenStreetMap coverage. I keep a marker when a complete matching outline is missing, and an unmatched area opens its source rather than pretending to be a different town. Boundary loading is bounded around a named place, so this is not a promise of every village outline everywhere. Credits now sit above the clock pills without a background, with full details on hover, keyboard focus or a tap.

I have also stopped using a country's Wikipedia article as a town's introduction. Smaller places now look for an exact GeoNames-to-Wikidata match, and a missing or ambiguous local article is stated plainly. Where that source records a town or borough within the other place's administrative area, the comparison explains that local relationship.

I have added chat avatars, with abstract shapes for guests and anonymous members. Signed-in members can open named members' profiles and wave through the existing pen-pal system. Anonymous identities stay separate, blocked profiles stay closed, and face photos remain for pen pals. Optional social profile links are also for mutual pen pals, with a warning before leaving Together for another network.

Chat tabs keep their positions when opened. The recent chats that fit stay along the bottom, with the rest in Chats, and an expand control lets a conversation use the map space.

You can share a public Connect view or a sourced atlas point to a chat, pen pal or another app. The chooser starts with your open chat, but nothing is sent without your click. Opening a shared point restores the comparison and scrolls to it, with reduced-motion preferences respected. Sourced connections are easier to spot; private answers are never included. Figures can change as their sources are updated.

I have brought the flat map's smaller places onto the 3D globe. Towns and villages appear as you zoom in, nearby places gather into groups, and individual places can be selected to compare. This uses the existing place catalogue, not every settlement in the world, and does not make anyone's public location more precise.

Switching between 2D and 3D now keeps the place at the centre of the clear part of the screen and matches the north-to-south ground scale. I have removed the automatic tilt and jump towards a selected pair when entering 3D. The flat map stays visible until the globe has drawn its first frame. A globe and a flat map still distort space differently, particularly near the poles, and returning from a tilted view restores a north-up map rather than a seamless projection morph.

I have smoothed how the globe reads ground height between elevation pixels, so the camera no longer steps from one pixel's height to the next as you move. I have also stopped drawing the hidden backs of the globe and terrain. Checks now cover steep viewing angles and both sides of the date line, but real-device performance and visible detail transitions still need testing.

I have moved You, Connect and Here into the top bar, where they open the matching sidebar panel. There is no separate Live map link: the map is the main site. Privacy and Changelog are in the footer, and the information pages link straight back to each map panel.

I have also increased how far the flat map can zoom in. Regional outlines load automatically around the selected city or town as you get closer, with finer administrative outlines appearing further in. There is no extra toggle. These come from OpenStreetMap, coverage varies, and they do not change how approximately people appear on Together.

There is a new “Map in words” summary, and a quiet three-stop journey through sourced facts when you compare two places. If two people are sharing a screen, they can also answer one gentle question: both must agree before either answer is shown, and skipping or hiding clears it. Remote pen-pal moments are still to come.

I have started a small place-audio prototype with two attributed London recordings. Nothing plays automatically, and places without reviewed recordings say so. This is a first example, not a claim to represent every voice or place.

The expanded checks also caught a delay in regional chat: newly signed-in members could take about a minute to count as active. I have corrected that so an active room can appear straight away.

I have added a small emote picker to chat, using ordinary Unicode symbols that remain part of the message rather than becoming public reactions or popularity counts. The map also has an optional approximate time-zone layer, showing solar-time bands and their current local times while being honest that real civil borders and daylight-saving rules differ.

The 3D globe now keeps detailed terrain through a wider transition range, judges detail by what a tile actually covers on screen at shallow angles, and uses smaller pixel and tile budgets on modest devices. This should make mountain detail feel steadier as the camera turns without asking low-end phones to do the same work as a large screen.

The smaller lights on the world now lead somewhere. Tap any displayed town or village and it becomes a full Connect destination, with its own population, coordinates, civil timezone, current weather and everything Together can responsibly inherit from its country. Antarctic research stations can be compared too, with their recorded opening details and source. Where a station's civil schedule is not reliably published, Together says clearly that its displayed clock is approximate solar time instead of presenting a guess as fact. These finer places never become anyone's public Live now location.

Community chat now works properly for visitors as well as members. Allow it in the privacy choices and Together gives you a friendly temporary name, then places the nearest regional conversation at the bottom of the map straight away. You can be the first person in the room; it no longer stays hidden while waiting for somebody else to arrive. People who made their privacy choice before visitor chat existed are asked about the new option clearly instead of being silently left without it.

Joining a regional conversation now opens that conversation immediately instead of dropping you back into the chat list and asking you to join again. The updated privacy notice also says plainly when an earlier cookie choice is being replaced, and asks you to agree to the updated cookies.

Together is now much more than a map. Choose any two places and it reveals the human stories between them: shared languages and roots, food and crops, climate and daylight, history, holidays, culture, trade, nature, health, sport, twin towns and much more. Every fact links back to its source, and you can compare up to four places at once or follow their histories on one timeline.

The map itself has become an experience. Switch into a tactile 3D globe with real mountain relief, sunlight, stars, the Sun and Moon in their true positions. Zoom towards the ground for finer coastlines, rivers, glaciers, landscape colour and city lights after dark. Towns and villages now emerge progressively as the map gets closer: busy regions glow together first, then separate into towns and finally individual villages at the deepest views. Together can now travel twice as close as before without making the opening view noisy or revealing anybody's precise location. Watch live aircraft and ships, follow their journeys, explore old maps and ice-age coastlines, or drag countries around the world to discover their true size.

The globe's night can now truly glow. A separate city-lights switch brings in NASA's Black Marble view only when asked, with population-weighted places shining on the dark side of Earth. Smaller places now shine more quietly, and distant towns gather naturally towards their busiest centre instead of sitting in a visible grid. The infrastructure layer traces mapped submarine internet cables across the Atlantic, Pacific and other waters in cyan, telecom routes in purple, mapped landing stations and data centres, operating and in-construction gas pipelines in orange, and the share of people using the internet in each country. Antarctica is back in full, with 144 research stations to discover on both maps. The new data room ranks sourced measures and lets you place two truths together on a chart, always naming the period and warning that a pattern is not proof of a cause.

Together now works beautifully across screens too: stretch one world across several displays, leave it running as a living screensaver, or control a big screen from your phone. A redesigned Live now sidebar keeps the world spacious and can be resized or tucked away whenever the map deserves the whole room; its handle now stays clear of the navigation even when the rail is narrow. Search beside the map's Share control to fly straight to a city or country. Nearby location dots grow towards the pointer, while connection lines illuminate and carry a travelling spark when you approach them. Open a World Heritage Site to see its freely licensed Wikipedia photograph and credit, and share any connection with a made-for-it preview card carrying Together's own type, mark, places and route into Discord and other chats.

The map can now become a shared journey. While somebody is live, a few of the coarse place-to-place connections they have just explored glow faintly on the world and appear beneath their dot. Open one for yourself or follow along as their curiosity moves. The trail disappears with them and is never kept as a history.

The first private beta also opens today. Invited members can create an identity, choose how they appear, wave to people elsewhere and become pen pals when a wave is returned. Pen pals can exchange thoughtful letters and privately share a real photo, while blocking, reporting, downloading and deleting your data remain firmly in your hands. Public map lines show that a connection exists between places, never who the people are.

Chats now sit at the bottom of every page. Pen pals can talk under their chosen names, with a conversation that remains until either person deletes it for both. Members who share a city, country or continent can choose to enter a room once somebody else is there. Anonymous members receive a room-only name, and every regional message disappears after seven days. Browser alerts are optional. Messages are encrypted in storage, screened before delivery for serious safety risks, and reportable without turning ordinary swearing into a crime.

Chat now feels part of the living map instead of part of its sidebar. On a large screen, conversations open over the map with a tab for every joined room; on a phone they become a focused panel of their own. A small target tab offers your nearest regional conversation and shows how many people are active there now, without joining you automatically. Pen pals appear with a shared picture when available, while regional chats use recognisable shapes of their real countries and continents. Direct conversations are clearly private and no longer describe two pen pals as a crowd.

Regional conversations now live on the world itself. When a place room has active members, a small speech bubble floats over that country, city or continent on both the flat map and 3D globe. Its number shows how many active members have joined; bouncing dots reveal that somebody is typing without revealing who or preserving a draft. Tap a bubble to inspect the room and choose whether to join it, even when the conversation is somewhere else in the world. On desktop, the chosen bottom tab now expands into the pinned chat window and disappears as a duplicate, just as a proper chat dock should.

Community chat no longer stops at the account gate. Visitors who allow its cookie receive a friendly automatic anonymous name and can join regional conversations straight away. You can choose a temporary name from You or turn that visitor identity into a full account later. Real member names stay reserved, so a temporary visitor can never pretend to be somebody who has registered. The same encryption, safety screening, reporting and seven-day regional history apply to everybody.

Together went online with one honest promise: help people notice what connects them before borders, politics or prejudice tell them what should divide them.

The first release introduced a living world map showing day and night as they really are. Visitors can appear as an unnamed dot at their nearest large city or country, choose a first name if they want to be seen, and send a simple wordless wave across the world. Nothing reveals an exact location, and closing the page makes you disappear.

Connect made any two places feel closer. It showed the time and season in both, the distance between them, when both people are likely to be awake, and what the Sun and Moon are doing overhead. “Find me” translated a device location into only the nearest large city on the device itself, then forgot the precise position.

From the beginning, Together was designed not to become a dating app, popularity contest or profiling machine. Its privacy controls use plain language, its sources are checked and credited, and its core pages remain useful on slow connections and without JavaScript. The purpose is simple: curiosity first, people first.