Chapter 10: Contacts and Private Chat

Your phone contacts. Those who are on KuhuChat can be chatted with; contacts who have not joined show an invite option. You land on this tab after login.

Alphabetically, across scripts, so names in Hindi, Gujarati and English are mixed in one list.

Open a private chat; view their wall; view their memory pins; see their voice status; see if they have a business and open it; analyse your chat with them in Mitra (see 17.1); or block them.

That person has not joined KuhuChat. Tap Invite and choose "Invite via WhatsApp (Free)", or SMS (carrier rates may apply).

That person's details are private to you, so some options on their card are not available.

Open the contact and choose Block. The app warns: "[Name] won't be able to message you, see your wall, tree, business, or status, and you won't see theirs either." To undo, choose Unblock: "You will be able to see and interact with [Name] again."

With your permission, it reads your phone contacts and converts each 10-digit number into a one-way scrambled code (a hash). Only the codes are compared. Your raw contact list is not uploaded as plain numbers.

Automatically in the background, at most about once every 12 hours. Use Refresh on the Contacts tab to update sooner.

Check that you saved their number in your phone, that you gave contacts permission to KuhuChat ("Make sure contacts permission is granted"), and tap Refresh. They must be registered with that same number.

The sync is skipped and you can still chat with people you already had chats with. Allow contacts in your phone settings to see the rest.

No. A browser cannot read your phone's contacts. It shows the contacts your phone has already synced.

Tap the search icon on the Contacts tab and type. You can type in any script, and the search also finds names written in another script.

Samaj search (see 4.4) finds members of your Samaj. The Contacts search finds your phone contacts.

Tap a contact who is on KuhuChat. The private chat opens. Type and send.

Yes. Chats and contacts work without a Samaj.

On wide screens, the chat list is on the left and the open chat on the right.

Sent: the message reached KuhuChat. Delivered: it reached the other person's phone. Read: they opened it. A clock or "queued" mark means it is waiting for internet.

Swipe the message to the right. The original appears above your reply.

Press and hold it for options such as Reply, Copy, Forward, Share and Delete. Swiping a message left tags it into a Diary thread.

Choose Forward, then pick the people or groups. Photos, videos, voice messages, documents, locations and albums can be forwarded as well.

Tap the attach button in the message bar and choose Gallery. You can select several; they are sent as an album. Add a caption if you want.

Choose Documents (or Files) in the attach menu and pick the file. PDFs show a small preview with the page count.

Yes, to save data and speed up sending. GIF files are sent as they are.

Tap it to open full screen. Use the save or share option to keep it.

Choose Camera in the attach menu. Switch between Photo and Video. In Photo mode tap the shutter; in Video mode tap to start and stop recording.

Flash (off, auto, torch), switch between front and back camera, quality choice and a self-timer for photos.

Use the microphone button in the message bar. The first time, allow microphone permission. Record, then send. You can delete a recording before sending.

Tap play on the voice message. You can move through it by dragging the bar.

Open the attach menu and choose GIF. Search for one and tap it to send.

Check your internet. Some phones pause animations in battery-saver mode.

When you send or receive a web link, the chat shows a small preview card with its title and image where the website provides them. Tap the card to open the link.

Tap the search icon at the top of the chat and type. Matching messages are highlighted.

Press and hold one message, then tap others. The top bar shows options such as delete and forward for all selected.

Swipe right on a message to reply. Swipe left to tag it into a Diary thread (see 18.3).

Press and hold it and choose Delete. You can delete it for yourself only, or for everyone in the chat.

It removes the message from the other person's chat and also removes its photo, video, voice or document from KuhuChat's storage. If the receiver had not read it, their unread count goes down.

From the Contacts tab, open the contact's menu and choose Clear chat. You can remove it from your list only, or delete it for both: "This will permanently delete your chat with [Name] for both of you. [Name] will not be removed as a contact. This cannot be undone."

After you delete a chat for everyone, they see "Chat deleted for everyone".

Text and media wait in a queue on your phone. The message shows in the chat as queued. When the connection returns, KuhuChat sends it automatically.

Queued media is saved on your phone, so it is sent when the app next has internet. Keep the app installed and signed in.

Message text, captions and media links are encrypted with AES-256 before they are stored, using a separate key for each chat. Messages are also protected in transit.

No. The keys are managed by KuhuChat's service so that your chats can be restored on a new phone and across devices. Please do not share sensitive details such as bank PINs or passwords in any chat.

In the app, only you and the people in the chat see your messages. Messages are stored encrypted, and your contacts are matched using scrambled numbers, not plain ones.

New messages in private chats, groups and Samaj chats. Tapping a notification opens that chat (see 2.4).

Use the menu, then Notification Sound (see 2.6).

See 2.4. Check phone notification settings, internet and battery saver.