The Joingy app lives in your browser

People search for the Joingy app, the Joingy download, even the joingy.com app, expecting a listing in an app store. There isn't one. Joingy is a web app: video chat, voice, text, your coins and the people you follow all load in the phone browser you already have. Open the page and it works, with no installer and no update to wait for.

What you can do is pin Joingy to your home screen. From then on it opens full screen, without an address bar, and behaves like any other random video chat app on your phone. It just skips the part where it eats storage and nags you about updates.

Safari gives the most reliable home screen shortcut on iPhone. Other browsers load Joingy perfectly well, but may not offer the same option.

Chrome handles it on most Android phones. Samsung Internet and Edge hide the same option in their menus.

If you are comparing chatting apps with strangers, it helps to know what each kind of install actually gets you. The home screen shortcut is not a lesser version of Joingy. It is the whole thing.

Lists of the best apps to video call strangers change every month, and most of them are written by people who never used the apps. So instead of a ranking, here is the checklist we would use ourselves when picking random chat apps.

One-on-one by default. A random video call app should put you with one person, not in a crowd. A fast way out. The next button should be quicker than an awkward silence. Report and block that work. A report should reach a human, and a block should stick. Honest pricing. Anything that promises free coins or unlimited calls forever is either lying or selling your data. Sane permissions. A video chat with strangers app needs your camera and microphone. It does not need your contacts, your photos or your location.

Joingy is built around that list. We don't claim to be the best stranger video calling app in the world, but we do tick every box on it.

A phone is the natural home for a random video call: the camera is already at face height and you can move to better light in a second. Lean the phone on something so your face is not bouncing around. Use headphones if anyone else is in the room. On mobile data, text matches barely use anything while video uses a fair amount, so switch to Wi-Fi if you plan a long night.

If the camera shows black, go to your phone settings, find your browser in the app list and turn camera and microphone access on. Then reload Joingy. That fixes nearly every "app not working" message we get.

The shortcut costs nothing, because it is just Joingy. The chat itself is free to start: new visitors get free matches and the Reward Center keeps topping them up while you stay online. Plenty of people search for free chatting apps with strangers and then hit a paywall on the second screen; we would rather tell you up front that longer sessions use coins. See is Joingy free for the whole picture.