Wavelength - Group Chat Reviews

by Feebdaed

Any app that starts by asking for a phone number gets deleted. So much for privacy.

by 00Hein

Takes hours to “sync” and a message of mine just fails to send without any detail.

by Ted_Tschopp

In high school I was the computer nerd and no one wanted to be friends with me.

Wavelength is like that. You can’t do anything in it when you onboard unless you are already in a group.

At this point Wavelength is yet another online profile that has no useful capabilities because they are all locked behind a closed door.

/shrug

Deleted.

by J_w_s

For me, bots never respond when mentioned and tapping the “message” button on a bot screen does nothing. So it feels like the primary purpose of Wavelength is completely broken.

by OtterBen

this app is a great way to build and interact with custom bots but for weeks (months?) it’s been unable to edit or create new ones. The returned server errors don’t affect bots I’ve already created and talk to but I miss being able to make refinements or test new ideas.

ChatGPT is running on 3.5 still and Anthropic’s Claude is just awful. Hoping for improved/restored custom bot support and an updated ChatGPT in the future! Would absolutely pay a subscription to continue using Wavelength and support ongoing development if offered, just wish that main draw for me was still working.

by Gorode

My future review will go here. Three stars for effort.

by Xoria

Wonderfully thoughtful, impressively technical app. The team would quickly add quality features and the premise of a decentralized, no-cloud E2EE platform is a fantastic objective.

Without proper moderation features to block and mute individuals to avoid seeing their content, however, Wavelength is a non-starter for many I wanted to try to bring to the platform.

Several of the initial communities on the platform have incredibly racist and aggressive individuals that can't be avoided because of the lack of moderation tools. Wavelength is best when interacting with dynamic group chats of hundreds of people, but as with any large group, there will be people that a user won't want to interact with.

Wavelength persists the ongoing stereotype of male/pale-run tech startups that don't consider the benefits of moderation tools, making spaces more accessible and inclusive for non-male / non-white users. It perpetuates the Silicon Valley / tech bro / libertarian echo chambers and systemically prevents diverse participation.

After a couple months of use, I left Wavelength and can't consider returning to it until these safety are added on. I grew tired of opening Wavelength to incredibly bigoted viewpoints that I can't avoid reading in groups I'd otherwise want to engage with.

by Mr. Cool Dudey Doo-doo

I didn’t know how to change my profile or name a chat. BTW, AI tracks you. Wavelength is ok but not great.

by JockM

I cannot think of a better app for starting new message threads. Sadly that is outweighed by the number of fundamental features that are missing.

- you can’t share videos
- you can’t share files
- you can’t “send to” this app
- you can only block users, you cannot mute them
- you can’t select and “send to” a message
- you can’t select multiple messages
- etc etc

The macOS app is missing even more things I would think of as fundamental

by Scampercom

Like many, I dove in based on the strength of John Gruber’s praise. But Wavelength’s rough edges are its downfall. • The biggest issue is that Wavelength freezes regularly, and has to reload itself as if it’s being recompiled. Literally: switch away from Wavelength for a few seconds then come back. I timed it: 15 seconds of UI lock and reloading, and it forgets what thread you were in, so you have to click that again. This is really confusing. I’ve never seen an app behave this way—and this is *after* several updates the dev team have made to address app slowness. Let’s just say there’s room for improvement.

by Heckj

Smooth app, easy understandable UI. I do miss the lack of emoji responses in threads (Feature Request)! - but the initial interaction has been great. i like how they handle photos - smoother than Slack, but only allowing photos from the photo library vs any image collection you might have in iCloud, for example.

by Erik The Late Adopter

Group messaging is handy but your collection of conversational threads may become disorganized and unwieldy. Being able to include ChatGPT in a conversation is both interesting and genuinely useful.

by Miniver Cheever

It really does

by Treefreedom

So far I am only chatting with the AI bot and surprised by the answers.

by Anh-Minh Do

Great for learning about what's happening in the world, meeting other people with similar interests, and going down your favorite rabbitholes.

by Ozexpat

At first I was skeptical and thought “do I really need another chat app?“

After joining a few active groups, I am absolutely hooked. You really see how design makes a huge difference an app specifically designed for group chat, feels very different to Telegram or ‎WhatsApp, or any of the other apps that are made for one-to-one communication.

by Calitalieh

Fun, secure, and easy. this app allows me to connect with a wide variety of people across lots of topics and events, like group chat combined with Quora/Twitter, without ads or creepiness.

by Cowboydirtydan125

This is a great chat app. I would like the devs to introduce search. This is a core need.

by Ricknca

Awesome app. My whole family uses it. Replaced Messenger and Text. Look forward to any updat. AI was a brilliant addition

by Ccheever

App slick and fast and the people on here are great.

by Syd1954

This is an awesome app and I love the AI feature!

by B311319

Wavelength is the best way to talk to friends and keep conversations and topics separate. so cool it’s fr the future of messenger apps

by Cheunga22

AI chat is really fun.

by Eagle Jackson

As a group messaging app, it's also a social media app. There is wonderful community on this app and I've been a very happy user since the first beta.

by Early Adopter Tech

I love Wavelength. It allows me to have multiple conversations with the same person at the same time! If you have having a reply quote on every message, you should try Wavelength for sure.

by Worldwide Viking

Clean and simple to use -- and I hate almost every group comms / social media app out there.

by Almostaconvert

The thing I like best about this app is how the little touches help create a kinder community.

by Redheaded Hottie

No more group chats in text. Wavelength is so great for friends to organize conversations. Love Wavelength

by SF->Austin

So some context - I am both a skeptic and a planner. My friend group in SF has been using FB Messenger for years to plan trips, post updates, and just chat generally, and frankly, it leaves a lot to be desired. ESPECIALLY for planning - details get lost, especially as people want to make jokes in the chat. It's not uncommon to have to scroll through literally HUNDREDS of messages to find the details for a house ski trip.

this app is awesome because you can have one group chat with different threads, and if the thread isn't relevant to you, you just mute it. So you can keep important details in one place. And, if someone messes up and puts jokes in the planning chat, you can move to another thread. We've used it for our main friend group and it's kept things so organized.

I hope they add:
- Better video support
- Emojis on messages
- Android version

But even without these things, Wavelength is awesome. Highly recommend!