Which phones and browsers work?

What a guest needs

A phone made in the last several years, a current browser and a working connection. That is the whole list. There is no app in any store, nothing to sign up for and no password to remember, which is the reason the page works for guests who never install anything.

Older phones are fine too. What matters is the browser version, and phones update that on their own.

1. Scan or open the link. The phone camera reads the code and offers the address. The link works the same way from a chat.
2. Pick files or record. Photos and videos come from the phone gallery; a voice message is recorded on the page itself.
3. Keep the page open. Uploads stop if the page is closed mid-send. Anything already sent has arrived.

The formats phones produce

Photos arrive as JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC. HEIC is what an iPhone saves by default and it needs no conversion. Videos arrive as MP4, MOV or WebM, and voice messages as M4A, OGG, WAV or WebM — which covers what a phone records without anyone changing a setting.

Files are checked by their contents, not their extension, so renaming one changes nothing.

The microphone permission

A guest who taps the voice recorder gets 1 browser prompt asking for the microphone. Allowing it starts the recorder; declining leaves it silent, and the page says so rather than failing quietly. The permission can be granted again in the browser settings for that site.

Another app holding the microphone — a video call, for instance — blocks it too. Ending the call and tapping again is enough.

What you need as the host

The dashboard runs in the same browsers, on a phone or a computer. A large screen is easier for reviewing an album or laying out a printed sign, but nothing is unavailable on a phone. You do need an account, because the dashboard controls someone else photographs.

The live wall is the exception worth planning for: it wants a screen or a projector, not a phone.

The connection is the real variable

Venue Wi-Fi is where uploads fail, not the browser. A room full of phones sending at once reaches the limit of a guest network long before it reaches ours, and a video is where that shows first. Mobile data is the more reliable choice in a crowded room.

Say this once out loud and it saves most of the evening: if it stalls, turn Wi-Fi off and send again.

The 2 cases that do go wrong

A browser that cannot open a particular photo is the first: the page suggests taking a screenshot of it and sending that instead. The second is an in-app browser — a link opened inside a social app rather than in the real browser — where the file picker can behave oddly.

Both are fixed the same way: open the link in the phone browser itself, then try again.