Nook Guide FAQ Privacy Terms

Guide

Using Nook

Every feature, in the order you're likely to meet it. Names in boxes are exactly what the screen says, so you can follow along on the phone.

01Getting started

Signing up needs a username, a password and a display name. An email address is optional and can be added later — it is only used to get back into your account, never to find you.

  1. Create the account. You'll agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy at this step.
  2. Set Up Your PIN — choose six digits. This is your everyday room's PIN, and you'll type it each time you open Nook.
  3. You land on Chats. The bar along the bottom is Chats, Friends and Settings.

The three icons on the Chats bar are the ones worth learning: 🔍 filters your chat list, 📣 opens Broadcast, and the key opens Switch PIN Slot — the subject of the next section.

02Rooms & the Room Key

A PIN doesn't only unlock Nook — it chooses which set of chats you see. The PIN you made at signup opens your everyday room. You can add another PIN that opens a completely separate one: its own chats, folders, friends and notifications.

Set up a hidden room

  1. Settings → PIN Management.
  2. Add Hidden PIN.
  3. Pick six digits that aren't your everyday PIN, confirm them, and give the room a name (Hidden Chat List). The name is only ever visible from inside.
  4. You're now back on the list. Notice that the new room is not shown — the screen says as much: hidden PINs aren't listed, for privacy.

Do this next, not later: while you're inside the new room, set up backup codes or a recovery contact. A room whose PIN you forget is gone, and there is no support ticket that changes that.

Switch between rooms

  1. On Chats, tap the key icon in the top bar (Switch PIN Slot).
  2. Type the PIN of the room you want — your everyday one or a hidden one. There is no list to choose from: the PIN is the choice.
  3. The chat list reloads as that room. Everything on screen from then on belongs to it.

Switching back is the same move with the other PIN. Closing and reopening Nook always starts at the PIN screen, so it never reopens into a hidden room by itself.

Moving a chat between rooms. Long-press it in the list and choose to move it, then type the PIN of the room it should go to. That's deliberate friction — a chat can only land somewhere you can prove you have the key to.

Change a room's PIN

  1. Unlock the room you want to change, then Settings → PIN Management → Change PIN.
  2. Enter the current PIN, then the new one twice.

This re-keys the door, not the room: Your chats stay as they are. Each room's PIN is changed from inside that room — there is no screen that lists them all.

What a hidden room does and doesn't hide

  • Nothing in the app shows that a hidden room exists. PIN Management says so plainly: hidden PINs are not listed there.
  • A wrong PIN just looks wrong. It never says "close" or hints that another room is there.
  • Its notifications are silent unless you turn them on from inside that room.
  • Chats, folders, friends and groups do not cross between rooms. A folder you make in one is invisible in the other.

Read this before you rely on it. A hidden room protects your conversations from someone holding your unlocked phone. It does not encrypt them against us — see the FAQ on encryption. And because we store only a hash of the PIN, nobody can recover a forgotten one for you.

03If you forget a PIN

Each room carries its own way back in, and you should set one up the day you create the room. There are two, and either is enough.

First, two different things that both say "forgot". Forgot Password? on the sign-in screen is about your account — it emails you and lets you back in. Forgot PIN? on the PIN screen is about one room. Your password can never open a room, and a PIN reset never touches your account.

Backup codes — no email needed

  1. Inside the room: Settings → PIN Management → Backup codes → Generate codes.
  2. Eight one-time codes appear. This is the only time they are ever shown. Write them down somewhere that isn't this phone.
  3. To use one: tap Forgot PIN? on the PIN screen, enter a code, then set a new PIN. Each code works once.

Why there's no "view my codes" screen. A list of backup codes sitting on the phone would prove a hidden room exists — which is the one thing the room is for. So they are stored only as hashes, and generating a new set replaces all eight.

A recovery contact

The alternative is Recovery contact, in the same PIN Management screen, inside the room it belongs to. It must be a different address from your account's own, and from every other room's — that separation is what keeps one room from pointing at another.

Recovery contacts are email only today. You can type a phone number, but Nook will refuse it rather than accept an address it can't actually deliver a code to — an unusable recovery contact is worse than none.

When you tap Forgot PIN? on the PIN screen, Nook asks for a contact and always answers the same way, whether or not it matched anything. If it did match, the code arrives at that address and re-keys only that one room. Your chats are untouched.

04Adding friends by QR

There is no username search and no phone-number matching in Nook. People reach you because you handed them a code.

  1. Friends → Show My QR. The other person uses Scan QR Code.
  2. When you generate one you choose Add to room (which room the friendship lands in), an Expiry, and how many times it may be scanned.
  3. Not in the same place? Share QR sends a link instead — opening it on a phone with Nook installed does the same thing as a scan.

My QR Codes lists everything you've made, with a Pause / Resume switch, a scan count, and Delete. A paused, expired or used-up code stops working immediately — people who already connected stay connected.

A code is a per-room thing. A QR generated inside a hidden room makes a friend who exists only in that room.

05Chats & messages

  • Start one with the ➕ button on Chats → New Chat, from anyone you're already friends with in this room.
  • Find one with 🔍 on the Chats bar. It filters this room's chat list by name — it does not search inside messages.
  • React by long-pressing a message. Edit your own with Edit; the other side sees it change, marked edited.
  • Delete gives you two different things: Delete for me hides it from your copy only, and the other person keeps theirs. Delete for everyone removes it on both sides, and only the sender can do it.
  • Delete a whole chat from Chat Info → Delete Chat, again for you or for both. Deleting for yourself hides the history; if that person writes again, the chat comes back with the new message and the old history stays hidden.

06Disappearing messages

Two independent timers, both counted from when the message is read, not when it's sent.

  • One message: tap ⏱ in the composer before sending and pick a duration.
  • A whole conversation: Chat Info → Message Expiry. New messages in that chat start with that timer, and you can still override any single one.

Groups work differently — see Groups. There the owner sets one clock for everybody, and it runs from when a message is sent.

07Folders

Tabs across the top of Chats that you swipe between, each with its own unread count. Folders belong to the room you made them in.

  1. Tap the edit icon at the right end of the tab strip → Manage Folders → Create Folder.
  2. Give it an emoji and a name — the emoji is what you'll actually recognise on the tab.
  3. Add chats by hand, or open the picker's Chat types section and add a rule such as all private chats or all groups. Rules and hand-picked chats live together, and you can remove either.
  • Pin up to five chats to the top of each folder.
  • Reorder folders, and hide All if you never use it.
  • Deleting a folder never deletes the chats in it.

08Groups

  1. ➕ on Chats → Create group. Pick members from your friends in this room, name it, Create.
  2. Chat Info holds the rest: Members, Add members, Rename group, the group picture, Leave group, and for the owner Delete group.

Auto-delete

Auto-delete messages puts everything sent in the group on one clock — 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or any duration you like on Pro. Only the owner can change it, everyone sees a banner saying what it is, and when it changes the group gets a line in the conversation saying who changed it.

Groups don't use read timers. The per-message ⏱ is hidden in a group on purpose: with many readers, "after it's read" has no single meaning. The group clock starts when a message is sent.

09Broadcast

One message delivered into many private chats at once. Everyone receives it as an ordinary message from you — there is no "broadcast" label on their side, and no group is created.

  1. 📣 on the Chats bar.
  2. Choose whole Folders, individual People & groups, or both. Someone in two selected folders still gets it once.
  3. Attach a photo or video, add a caption, optionally set an expiry, and Send to all.

Afterwards you're told how many chats it reached and how many were skipped — anyone who has blocked you is skipped silently.

Replies come back as normal chats. Each person answers you privately; nobody sees who else received it, and one photo is stored once no matter how many people it went to.

10Notifications

  • A notification never contains your message text. It tells you something arrived, and at most who it's from. Message Preview in Notification Settings controls whether even that much is shown.
  • Quiet Hours silences everything between the times you set.
  • Per chat: Chat Info → Notifications to mute it, for a while or until you unmute. Groups also offer Mentions only.
  • Hidden rooms are silent by default. Turning them on is a per-room switch you can only reach from inside that room, and it asks you to confirm — a notification arriving while someone is watching your screen is exactly the thing the room was hiding.

11Your account, devices & blocking

  • Block someone from Chat Info → Block User, or from their entry in Friends. They can no longer reach you. Blocked Users in the Friends menu lists them and unblocks with one tap.
  • Removing a friend is separate from blocking, and leaves the existing chat where it is — it only means no new connection.
  • Your profile — display name, bio and pictures — is Settings → Profile. It's what friends see; your username is not a way for strangers to find you.
  • Language: Settings → Language Settings, ten to choose from.
  • Account recovery: Settings → Email adds a verified address so you can reset a forgotten password. Keep it separate in your head from a room's recovery contact.
  • Your devices: Settings → Device Management lists everywhere you're signed in, with when each was last used. Signing one out ends that session immediately. Changing your password signs out everything.

12Free and Pro

Free includes one hidden room, five folders per room, groups up to 50 people, and five broadcasts a day to 20 chats each. Pro raises all of it — the full table is on the home page.

If a Pro subscription lapses, nothing is deleted. Limits go back to the free ones, and hidden rooms past the free allowance become read-only: you can still open them and read everything, you just can't send until you're back on Pro or remove a room.