Info › Help › Connecting

How does group chat work?

A group is a private, text-only chat with a set of connected friends — separate from your one-to-one chats with a single person. There are no photos or attachments, and nobody outside the group can see it.

Every group has a size limit, so it stays a genuine friend circle rather than a broadcast list. You can have up to 12 people in a group today; the group's own member count, shown at the top (for example, 7/12), always tells you exactly how much room is left.

You join a group the same way you reach anyone on 8nOut: through an accepted connection. Inside a group it works a little differently from one-to-one, though. You don't need to be connected with everyone already in the group — only with whoever added you. Any current member can invite someone they're connected with, so a group can end up with people you've never connected with yourself.

Because of that, it's worth knowing exactly who you are and are not connected with inside a group. Open the group's Members list, and every row tells you plainly — Connected, or Not connected — always about you specifically, never about the group as a whole. Being in a group together does not connect you to someone; only an accepted connection request does that.

Any current member can rename a group — not just whoever created it. Open the group's menu and choose Rename group, pick a new name, and save. Everyone in the group sees a short note in the chat itself right away, naming who renamed it and what it's called now — so nobody's left wondering why the title just changed.

A group that gets no new message and nobody new joining for 90 days is deleted for everyone — the group itself, its whole member list, and any messages still in it. This can't be undone. Seven days before that happens, everyone currently in the group sees a short notice in the chat itself, in the same style as a rename notice, warning that the group will be deleted if things stay quiet.

Sending a message, or someone new joining, resets that clock and cancels the pending deletion — someone leaving doesn't count. If a message in the group is currently being reviewed by a moderator, the group waits and isn't deleted until that's resolved.