We built Vooz for two people at a time.

Vooz is a random chat that lives at vooz.video. You open it in a browser, pick one of three modes (text, voice or video) and hit start. One stranger connects, and you keep talking until the conversation runs dry. Once it does, next brings somebody else in.

Around that core sit a few extras. A translate button sits under typed messages, handy when your match lives in another country. People who want an audience can stream, and anyone can scroll Vooz Live, say hello in the room chat and ask for a private call. Sign in and you also get a profile, follows and direct messages, which means a match you liked can outlast the next button.

Names travel badly. A friend says it out loud across a noisy room, somebody types it on a cracked phone screen, autocorrect adds an opinion, and by the time it lands in a search bar Vooz has become voos, vooz chat, voozchat, app vooz or vooz.co. Every one of those roads ends here. This is Vooz, the random chat at vooz.video, and the start button on this site opens the same text, voice and video matching that whoever mentioned it was describing.

Below are the spellings and searches that bring people to us most often, with what each one usually means. If yours is on the list, you found the right Vooz.

A question reaches the support inbox often enough to deserve its own chapter: is this the Vooz app, the official Vooz website, or a web version of something that lives somewhere else? It is all three at once. Vooz is built as a web app. The site you are reading, the chat that opens after you press start and the icon you can drop onto a phone home screen are one product, and none of them is a copy of another.

That choice has practical upsides. You never sit through an update, because the newest Vooz is simply whatever loads on your next visit. A laptop at a desk, a tablet on the sofa and a phone on the bus all reach the same chat, and once you sign in, your coins, follows, messages and settings are waiting on each of them.

It also explains why Vooz has no app store listing and no apk. If a download page offers a Vooz installer, a modded Vooz or free Vooz coins, treat it as a scam: it did not come from us, and it is after your login or your card.

Plenty of chat products grow sideways until the actual conversation gets lost. We went the other way. Every design decision on Vooz starts from the question of whether it helps two people talk, and a lot of popular ideas did not pass that test.

Picture opening Vooz for the first time on a weeknight. The start screen asks you to choose text, voice or video, and you go with text because you are still in pyjamas. You press start and a small card pops up about whoever joined, naming them, giving their age and country, their level, and the tongue they chat in. This person is in Peru, the language line says Spanish, and your own Spanish stopped somewhere around the classroom.

Here the translate button earns its keep. Their opening message arrives in Spanish, and one tap underneath shows it in English. You answer in English and they read it in Spanish on their side. A while later the chat has wandered onto football and street food, and neither of you has touched a camera.

When it winds down, next brings someone new. After a few of those you might set the mode to video for the following match, or open the online list and scroll the Live tab to see who is streaming. Somewhere along the way you notice the Reward Center above the match screen counting down; when it finishes, one tap claims free matches or coins. The full order of events, including the point where coins begin to matter, is laid out in how Vooz works.

A chat that introduces strangers should never surprise them at checkout. Vooz is free to start: newcomers are handed a set of free matches, and the Reward Center tops that up whenever its countdown ends. Missing a day breaks nothing, since there is no streak to keep alive. Coins handle the rest, meaning further random matches once the free ones are used, private video calls with somebody you chose by hand off the online list, gifts, and entry to ticketed live rooms.

When your balance is too thin for a private call, Vooz shows the top-up screen first and holds the call back, and a gift always shows a confirmation first. VIP is a membership status with its own badge, which you can hide, plus member pricing on top-ups. We keep that description short on purpose, because describing what exists beats advertising what might.

Vooz is for adults, 18 and over, without exceptions. Vooz suits people who are curious rather than in a hurry: night owls looking for company, travellers checking what a city is like before they visit, and learners who want real practice instead of flashcards. Plenty of others simply like the small surprise of not knowing who will appear, and being able to walk away as soon as the fun fades.

If you prefer to begin quietly, the text side of Vooz never switches on your camera. If you would rather keep Vooz one tap away, adding it to your home screen takes a few seconds on iPhone or Android.

Questions about an account, a top-up, a report or your data go to one address, [email protected], and a member of the Vooz team answers. The contact page lists what to include so we can help on the first reply.

Feedback is welcome in the same inbox. If a feature confused you, a translation came out strange or you have an idea that would make a first conversation easier, tell us; suggestions from members shape what gets fixed next.