About BareRTC

This chat room software is called BareRTC and this page contains information about the software and how to use it.

BareRTC is an open source project released under the GNU General Public License with code available here.

About {{AsHTML .Config.Title}}

{{AsHTML .Config.Title}} is the name of this particular BareRTC server. The administrator may have left some links to more info below:

Website: {{.Config.WebsiteURL}}

Help & Support

Tour of the user interface
Video Sharing How-To's
Feature Highlights
Supported Browsers
Privacy
Troubleshooting

Tour of the user interface

Screenshot of the user interface on desktop

Pictured: Screenshot of the user interface on tablet or desktop-sized screens.

Screenshot of the user interface on mobile

Pictured: Screenshot of the mobile interface

Above are screenshots of how the chat room looks on desktop and mobile displays, respectively. For a description of some of the features pointed out above:

Your camera controls: Clicking on the button will enable your webcam and your video may be watched by other people in the chat room. While broadcasting, you can Stop your webcam, Mute your microphone, and see who is currently watching you by clicking on the button, which will show the number of watchers inside the button itself.
- The button will toggle the setting on your camera. If you are going to be behaving sexually on cam, we ask that you please mark your own camera as 'Explicit' by using this button. The button will illuminate in red when active, and look like:
- You can also see who is Watching your camera by clicking on the "Watching" tab on the Who's Online list.
The Who Is Online list shows all of the people who are currently connected to the chat room. The Who List is global to the entire chat - it is the same list of people no matter which Channel you are currently looking at. In the Who List you may also find buttons to open a Direct Message (DM) or tune in to somebody's webcam if they are currently broadcasting.
- This button will open their profile page, if they have one. The icon may be color-coded for the user's gender, if available: male, female, and non-binary/trans/other.
- This button will open a Direct Message (DM) chat with this person.
- This button will open the user's webcam, if they are broadcasting. A blue button means they're live, a red means their video feed is marked NSFW or explicit. A greyed out button means they are not currently broadcasting their video.
The Channels & DMs panel lists the available public chat channels you may participate in as well as any currently open DMs for private one-on-one chats with other people. Some channels may have notification counters beside them to indicate unread messages have appeared.
- Note: the Chat Rooms are just public channels that everybody is "in" and is designed to organize public conversations into various topics. For example, one chat room may be a dedicated space for people to share photos on chat so that the main conversation channels don't get spammed too much with those photos.
The Message entry box at the bottom of the screen is how you type a message and send it to the currently selected Channel or DM conversation.
- In public channels you may send a picture by clicking on the picture button to the left of the message box.
- You may add an emoji to your message by clicking on the smile icon to the right of the message box.
- You may at-mention people in chat by typing the "@" symbol, which should prompt an auto-complete of users currently online. You may hit the Tab key to insert the currently selected name into your message.
In the upper right, the Menu button houses some options such as the Chat Settings. Some interesting features in there include:
- Video scaling: you can make the webcam videos larger on your screen to see your chat partners in better detail.
- Sound effects: by default it plays a sound when you receive a new Direct Message but you can also turn on sound effects for public chat messages and when people join or exit the room. If the chat room is currently empty, you could set a sound effect when somebody joins so you know there may be someone to chat with then!

On mobile web browsers that don't have large enough screens to show everything at once, the Chat Room screen is shown by default and buttons appear in the corners to get to the two side panels (to change channels or manage your DMs, and to see Who Is Online and tune in to their webcams, respectively).

Feature Highlights

Emoji Reactions

You may add emoji reactions to chat messages by clicking on the button at the bottom right corner.

Reactions added by yourself or others will appear at the bottom of their message. You can see who reacted by hovering your mouse cursor over the button, or you can 'upvote' their reaction by clicking on it.

Muting spammy users

If somebody on chat is bothering you, you may mute their messages by clicking on the red button on their message.

While they are muted:

You will no longer see their future messages in public chat rooms.
You will no longer receive any of their future Direct Messages (DMs).
They will not be allowed to watch your webcam if you are sharing. The chat server will lie and tell them your camera isn't even online so they will not know they had been muted.

The mute is temporary and will last for the remainder of your chat session (until you log off).

Styling Your Messages

BareRTC supports Markdown syntax for your chat messages. You can make text bold by putting asterisks around part of it, **like this** or make text italic with *single asterisks*.

Hyperlinks you paste that begin with https:// will be clickable as-is, or you can create a custom label for it by typing e.g. [click my link](https://www.wikipedia.org/).

To learn more about Markdown, please check out the Markdown Guide website.

About webcam sharing

The WebRTC technology used by this chat room allows for direct, peer to peer connections between you and the other chat members to stream video and audio directly to one another, without needing a server in the middle to relay all that data. In many cases, WebRTC should "just work" but you may run into trouble broadcasting if your local network is heavily firewalled (for example on a corporate or school network).

In many WebRTC video apps (such as Zoom, Jitsi, Google Hangouts, etc.), when one or both parties are on such difficult networks, a server in the middle is used to transfer the video data between them. BareRTC does not have any such server, as the bandwidth costs to carry your video could get expensive! If your video sharing is not working, it's unfortunate but you should still be able to have text chat conversations as normal.

Notice: because of the peer-to-peer nature of the webcam feature, it is possible that your chat partner may discover your IP address if they check their local computer's connections. This is true of all WebRTC-based video chat systems. Also, it is possible that your chat partner may "screen record" your video -- also true of all video sharing systems. Please inform a moderator if you know somebody is violating your privacy in this way so that they may be banned from the chat room.

How do I go on video?

To share your webcam, click on the green button at the top left of the web page. This will open a modal with some options for your camera:

You may start with your microphone muted by default.
You may mark your camera as "Explicit" to begin with. If you are intending immediately to behave sexually on camera, please mark this box so that your camera will appear 'red' by default and other people on chat can know what they're getting into when they click to watch your camera.
You may opt-in to some "mutual webcam settings":
- You may require your viewers to also be sharing their own camera first before they can open yours.
- You may automatically open your viewer's cameras when they open yours (and they are also broadcasting).

How do I stop my camera?

When you are broadcasting, the red " Stop" button at the top of the page will turn your camera off.

How do I mute my camera's microphone?

The button to Mute will be at the top of the page next to the Stop button. Alternatively, you can click on the microphone inside your own webcam video preview to toggle the mute that way. Either button works!

How do I see who is watching me?

You may click on the button at the top of the page to see who is watching you. The number inside the button will be your current number of viewers.

You may also click on the Watching tab in the Who's Online list.

How do I stop somebody from watching me?

On the Who's Online list, click on the Watching tab to see who is currently watching your camera.

To 'boot' somebody off your camera, click on the button next to their name. This will kick them off your camera and they will not be allowed to re-open your cam for the remainder of your chat session.

To people who have been booted from your camera, the chat server will tell them that your camera isn't even broadcasting at all! They will see a greyed-out video button and may think you have simply turned off your camera, and they won't know for sure that you have booted them!

Supported Browsers

All features of the chat room, including webcam sharing, should generally work on all current web browsers and devices (Firefox, all Chromium browsers including Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, Safari, Androids and iPads).

Privacy

Some of the privacy considerations with this chat room include:

The server does not maintain long-term state of chat history. Messages are pushed out as soon as they come in, and users are forgotten when they log off.
However, the server does keep temporary log files to help the server admin troubleshoot issues and check on the health of the server. These logs may include chat messages sent to public channels. Private chat (DMs) are not logged by default. If the server is running in debug mode (which provides a ton of telemetry to diagnose issues), the contents of DMs may be logged since debug mode will record the low-level chat protocol messages sent between the server and clients.
If the administrator has enabled it, your recent direct message histories may be recorded (for your convenience) in a database. Old messages expire off after about 90 days, and you can clear all your DMs history from the Chat Settings -> Misc tab. DMs are only logged when the associate website logs you in to the chat room, so that only you can access them to remember where you left off with a chat partner.
Chat moderators DO NOT get to see the contents of your Direct Message conversations - that feature is not programmed in to this chat room. The server logs which might capture your conversations are usually not actively monitored. Consider taking your especially sensitive conversations to a different platform if you are very concerned about it.
Webcam sharing is peer-to-peer so it is possible that your chat partner could identify your IP address by checking their computer's open connections. But this is true of basically all WebRTC webcam services and is part of how WebRTC works.
As with all video sharing services, it is always possible that your chat partner may screen record their computer and thus record a copy of your video. This is a risk inherent with all video sharing platforms - you can't control what software the other party may be running, so choose your risk tolerance accordingly.

Troubleshooting

This section contains some troubleshooting advice for issues commonly experienced in the chat room.

Webcam Sharing

Permission Denied, or NotAllowedError

If you see an error message from ChatClient that says something like "Webcam error: Permission denied" or a "NotAllowedError," this section is for you.

The reason for this error is that your web browser did not grant access to your Camera and Microphone for the chat room to use. This may be because you accidentally clicked on the "Deny" button when your browser asked you for permission, or because your web browser itself does not have permission for these devices on your computer.

When you encounter this error, there are two places to look to resolve this:

In your web browser's settings (e.g. in Google Chrome or Firefox), make sure that you are granting permission for your Camera and Microphone to the chat room's website ({{.Hostname}}).
In your operating system's settings, ensure that your web browser itself has permission to use your Camera and Microphone. Notice: on recent Mac OS and Windows systems, your web browser might not have permission by default to access these devices!

Please see the following sections for in-depth guidance on where to look.

Notice: webcam sharing will require both your Camera and your Microphone permission - if either one is denied, webcam sharing will fail.

1. Check your web browser's permissions for {{.Hostname}}

Go into your web browser's settings, to the "Privacy" or "Permissions" section and verify that {{.Hostname}} has permissions to use your Camera and your Microphone. Or at the very least: make sure that these settings are not set to "Deny" for {{.Hostname}}.

For example, on Google Chrome:

Go into your browser Settings -> "Privacy and security"
Click on "Site settings" ("Controls what information sites can use and show (location, camera, pop-ups, and more")
From here you can check the permissions in two ways:
- Under the "Recent activity" section, look for {{.Hostname}} or click "View permissions and data stored across sites" to look for it there.
- Or: under the "Permissions" section, click into the "Camera" and "Microphone" settings to see the list of sites you've given/denied permission for, and change {{.Hostname}} to "Allow" or remove {{.Hostname}} from the list of sites.

Or for example, on Mozilla Firefox:

Go into your browser Settings -> "Privacy & Security"
Scroll down to the "Permissions" section where you see buttons for Camera and Microphone.
Click on the "Settings..." button for Camera and Microphone to see the list of websites you've given/denied permission for.
Find {{.Hostname}} and remove it from the list.

After changing your browser settings, exit and restart your web browser and log on to the chat room. When going on webcam, hopefully your browser should ask you for permission for your webcam and microphone: be sure to click on "Allow" when prompted.

If the change in your web browser's settings doesn't resolve the permission error, then check in your operating system's settings.

2. Check in your operating system's settings

For example, if you are on Mac OS:

Click on the Apple icon in your top menu bar and open "System Settings"
Click on "Privacy & Security"
Look for the Camera and Microphone settings and ensure that they are allowed for your web browser.
For more information, try: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-your-camera-mchlf6d108da/mac

Or for example, if you are on Windows 10 or Windows 11:

Click on the Start button > Settings > Privacy & Security > Camera, and make sure Camera access is turned on.
Make sure that "Let apps access your camera" is also turned on.
Ensure that your web browser (e.g. Google Chrome) has permission to access your camera and microphone.
For more information, try: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/manage-app-permissions-for-your-camera-in-windows-87ebc757-1f87-7bbf-84b5-0686afb6ca6b

Other Webcam Errors

The most common error is a Permission Error as described above, but there are some less common error messages you may experience. Here is a short list of some of them:

AbortError: e.g. "Starting videoinput failed"

A common cause for this error may be that your webcam device is already in use by a different program, so that your web browser was not able to open it. Please make sure that you are not running another video chat program (such as Skype or Zoom) which has your camera active, and try again.
NotFoundError or NotReadableError

This error may indicate that your camera device was not available to your web browser. For example, your webcam might not be plugged in to USB or you may be missing hardware drivers for it. To begin diagnosing this problem, check whether other websites or apps are able to use your camera: if none of them can either, it heavily points toward a hardware or driver error.

Other possible errors should be uncommon. If this troubleshooting guide has not been helpful, try copying the error message into a search engine and find information online: all of the text following "Webcam error:" will be coming from your web browser, so relevant results may be found online. A possible place to start may be the Mozilla documentation for getUserMedia.

Other peoples' webcams don't load

It may sometimes happen that you clicked to watch somebody else's webcam on chat, and their video doesn't load. If it only happens with some cameras (but other cameras load correctly), then the problem is most likely on that person's side and not your own: their camera likely doesn't work for anybody else who is trying to watch it, either.

Webcam sharing on the chat room works by "peer to peer" direct connections between chatters. Usually, this tends to "just work" for most people, but sometimes your network connection or firewall can get in the way and prevent a connection from being established.

The most common kinds of network conditions that cause problems connecting to webcams include:

If you are on a heavily firewalled network, such as in a school or workplace.
If you are on a cellular network, e.g. from a smartphone or tablet. Some cell phone carriers add firewalls to their network to prevent direct peer-to-peer connections with mobile devices.
If you are using a Virtual Private Network, or VPN: some VPN providers don't forward the kind of network messages that are needed to establish a peer-to-peer connection.

For some specific advice:

If you can not connect to any webcam at all (e.g. many people are on webcam but you can not get any of them to work): most likely it is because you are on a firewalled network, like those listed above. If you are on a cell network, try switching to WiFi; or if you are using a VPN, try turning off your VPN.
If only one or two webcams won't open for you, but others on the chat room are working: the problem is likely not on your end! It is likely that the people whose cameras are not working are on a firewalled network, and they are likely having worse problems than you are!
If somebody's webcam button has a slash \ through it, like then it probably means that this person requires you to share your webcam first before you can open theirs. You can click on their camera button to see an exact reason why their camera has the \ slash through it.