Help

Let's Mingle is a room, not a meeting. Everyone in a space can see everyone else, several conversations run at once, and you move between them by clicking. There is nothing to schedule, nobody to admit, and no account to make.

Getting in

A space is a link. Anyone who has it can walk in, so treat it the way you would treat the address of a room you left unlocked — the id is long and unguessable, and knowing it is what grants entry. There is no invitation to accept and no password.

On the way in you type a name and see a preview of your camera. The name is whatever you want to be called; it is not checked against anything. Your camera can be off and you can still enter — people just cannot see you.

Your microphone starts off. Only you ever turn it on. Nothing in the product will unmute you: not joining a conversation, not being spoken to, not a host addressing the room.

Talking to people

Click someone’s face and you are talking to them — no ring, no waiting for them to accept. If they are already in a group, you join the group rather than pulling them out of it.

• Join moves you into a conversation. If you were already in one you leave it in the same step — clicking another group switches you over rather than bringing anyone with you. The people you were talking to carry on without you.
• Leave puts you back on your own, in the room, still visible to everyone.

The conversation you are in can be named — click the title on your own card and type. Only the people in a conversation can name it, so other cards show their titles as plain text. A conversation nobody has named is titled after the people in it, like “Ada, Bo and 7 others”.

When everyone walks away

An unnamed conversation dissolves when the last person leaves. A named one is held for five minutes — the card stays, reading “Everyone stepped away” with a countdown, and anyone can walk back into it. Press Keep this room and it stops expiring altogether.

Being available, or not

Your name in the bar at the bottom is a menu. It has three states:

• Available — people can click your face and speak.
• Focus — visible, but not interruptible by voice.
• Away — not here right now.

Focus and Away protect you only while you are standing on your own; anyone already in a conversation can be joined, which is the point of the room. Choosing Away also steps you out of the conversation you are in. Choosing Focus does not — it lets the one you are in finish.

Your camera and microphone

Both live in the bar at the bottom, and they mean the same thing everywhere in the space. The microphone is never switched by moving between groups.

• Hearing someone never turns your microphone on. Audio you receive and audio you send are separate; a face on screen can never carry sound you did not ask for.
• Your microphone goes amber when you are muted and people are standing with you — the case where you probably meant to be heard. Muted on your own is just resting.
• With your camera off, your tile shows your initials rather than a black square, so you still read as present.
• Only people in your conversation can hear you. The server enforces that, not the page.

Bigger rooms

As a room fills, faces get smaller and then become name chips — the room re-reads itself so thirty people still fit on a screen. Your own conversation is always drawn one size larger than everyone else’s, so you can find yourself at a glance.

A conversation shows at most six faces, and the rest become a +3 chip. Hover it to see who it is hiding; click it to open the card and show everybody, and Show less to put it back. One card opens at a time.

If you scroll away from your own conversation, a small bar appears with its name and a Leave button. Clicking the name scrolls you back to it.

Hosting

Whoever opens a space with a host link gets a Host panel. A host can broadcast audio or video to the whole room, message everyone, and post an announcement. Broadcasting does not move anybody or change anybody’s microphone — including the host’s: if yours is off, nobody hears the broadcast until you turn it on.

The demo room

The demo is an ordinary space with a cast of simulated people in it, so you can see what a busy room feels like without organising one. Walk over to a group and you will hear them talking; they cannot hear you, and there is nothing to unmute. Nobody in it is real, and nothing that happens in it is recorded.

When something is wrong

“We could not access your camera or microphone”

The browser refused. Allow access in the address bar and reload. If your camera works elsewhere but not here, check whether the operating system has blocked the browser itself — on a Mac, Privacy & Security → Camera.

“No camera available”

Either none is connected, or the system has taken camera access away from this browser. You are still in the space either way; people just cannot see you.

“We could not reach the media service”

Presence is working but audio and video are not getting through — usually a network that blocks the ports video needs. A different network is the quickest test.

Your camera is open but sending no picture

Another app or another browser window has it. Close the others and reload — cameras are generally exclusive to one user at a time.

“You opened this space in another window”

One window per space, so two copies of you never appear in the same room. The newest window wins; the older one releases the camera and offers to take it back.

Camera and microphone need https

Browsers only allow them on a secure origin. If you are reaching the app over plain http, neither will work — this is the browser’s rule, not ours.

Anything else

Write to hello@letsmingle.io. What we do with the little data there is, is set out in the privacy policy, and the terms cover the rest.