Communities and group chats are a great way to bring people together and make connections based on the things we have in common, from family groups, to big communities of people who are all interested in the same thing.

When it comes to choosing the right type of chat to open for your group, you need to consider some important questions:

Size really does matter

Group chats are usually smaller and are perfect for private connections. A group chat on Viber is best for chatting with up to 250 members – usually family or close friends. Members are invited to join, or can join by a direct link.

Communities are much larger, public-facing groups, usually made up of people who don’t know each other. A community can have unlimited members, and admins can allow all members to invite their friends to join.

Inclusiveness is the name of the game

If someone joins a group chat in the middle of a conversation, they will miss all the earlier conversation, and it can take some time to catch up. Not really a great way to welcome a new member!

In a community, the entire chat history is available to everyone, no matter when they joined the community. New members can read back through earlier messages, or focus on the current chat and jump right in. The choice is theirs.

Your privacy matters whatever the chat

Group chats work best when everyone knows each other, and feels safe with the other members of the chat. The phone numbers of everyone in the chat are visible, so anyone can message or call another group member privately.

Communities are different. As anyone can easily join a community, phone numbers of members of the community are hidden. This is important to us at Viber – a way to ensure that communities are a safe space for members to meet new people and bond over their shared passions – all without exposing their private phone number.

Everyone in a community (admins included) can choose whether to let other community members message them in a Hidden-number chat. Even if you have enabled incoming chats from people you don’t know, you still have the choice to accept or decline a message from a new person.

You have the power

In group chats, admins can remove or members or add other members.

Communities come with special powers for admins to oversee the conversation. Admins can add and remove members, invite admins who can write in the community’s chat, remove people from the community, ban people from joining or rejoining the community, and appoint other admins or superadmins to help manage the community.

It’s time to take a snooze

In group chats, members receive a notification every time there is a new message. If there is a busy chat taking place, members receive smart notifications (several notifications in one) so that their phones don’t beep too much!

In communities, members can take a break from the community by “snoozing” it for 30 days. Snoozing gives the member a break from the community, but they are still a member. When the 30 days are up, the community will unsnooze, and the community will reappear at the top of the chat list the next time there is a new message.

When it comes to chatting in a big group of people, communities create great connections for more people.

Start making those connections and create your community today. Remember, your community can be based on anything at all, from candle lovers to Kendall lovers.

Read our other blogs in the communities series:

Get Started with Your Very Own Viber Community!

Your time to shine: Manage, grow and engage a Viber Community!

Community Insights: Measure The Success of Your Community

Master your Community: New ways to add members & more

Community Masters: Viber’s tools for outstanding content

In today’s world, even though we are on our phones all the time, many of us spend hours every day on a computer be it at work, school, or home.  We want to be able to do everything we usually do on our phones on our computer, without the need to check our phones every few minutes.

Viber for Desktop is just for that – an easy way to keep on chatting and stay connected throughout the day, without having to look away from your computer.

Read our top 5 reasons why you should get Viber for Desktop on your computer right now:

1. It’s always synced

All messages that you send and receive on Viber – whether you are on your computer or mobile phone – are continuously synced, so you will never miss a message, or have gaps in your chat.

Once you set up Viber for Desktop, you connect your phone in order to sync all your previous messages and contacts, so that you can carry on chatting from exactly the same place you left off.

2. It’s comfortable and easy to use

Sometimes it is just that much easier to use a big screen and proper keyboard to read and type your messages. That’s where Viber for Desktop really shines – you have your keyboard, mouse and big screen all there to make this chat easier, and therefore more fun.

Calling on a big screen has even more advantages – when you are on a call with someone and you want them to see what is on your screen, share your screen. For example, you are both going over a document, share your screen so that you can be sure you are talking about the same thing.

Make and receive calls, including Viber Out calls, directly from your computer, and if you want to change how you are chatting, you can transfer your call from your phone to your computer (or from your computer to your phone) without interrupting the flow.

There’s lots more you can do with Viber for Desktop. To get you started, check out these great hacks.

3. It’s secure

Viber for Desktop is totally private. Just like with Viber on your mobile phone, messages sent to or from Viber for Desktop are end-to-end encrypted by default, which means that only you and the person you are chatting with have the (automatic) keys needed to decrypt and understand the message.

Viber for Desktop was created as a standalone app, rather than a web application like other messaging apps, because it allows us to ensure tight privacy and security for the messages you send and calls you make from your computer.

We know some of you use Viber for Desktop on a shared computer. To help you keep your chats private, we introduce Viber-screen lock. When you need to leave your computer, and someone else may use it when you are away, simply lock Viber so that your messages and notifications are hidden from view until you come back and unlock it.

4. It saves you battery and data

You read that right. Whereas some apps need your phone to be on, and have access to the internet, and remain close to your computer to receive calls and messages, Viber doesn’t. In fact, if you forgot your phone at home, and you have Viber for Desktop installed on your computer it will make sure you never miss a chat or call all day long.

This saves your phone battery because you aren’t relying on Viber on your phone, nor are you using up battery keeping your phone connected to the computer. You also save data because you don’t need to use your phone to download images, make calls, or send messages.

5. You can connect Viber to as many computers and tablets as you like

There is no limit to how many computers or tablets (including iPads) you connect your Viber to. You can connect Viber to your home computer, work computer, tablet, and all will sync seamlessly to every Viber chat.

Now go get Viber for Desktop

Do you want Viber for Desktop? First, make sure have Viber on your phone. Setting up and connecting Viber for Desktop is easy – get started now by going to https://www.viber.com/download/ and clicking on Download for Windows or Download for Mac.

Make the best use of Viber when you are at your computer, and download Viber for Desktop now.

Viber is, and always will be, completely free for you to send unlimited fast messages and make endless crystal-clear calls to other people on Viber.

As you use the Viber app, you may have noticed ads and offers from businesses appear in your main chat list, right after calls, and in other select places around the app. Showing you these tailored and relevant offers help us keep the app free for you to use.

Ads help us keep Viber free

Behind Viber is a talented team of developers, product managers, designers, and many others, who are all committed to creating the best, safest, and fastest messaging app in the world. In order to keep the running of Viber free, we came up with this solution of showing a limited number of ads to our users.

Privacy first: Ads are never based on your chats

Your privacy is one of the most important things for us at Viber. That’s why our default end-to-end encryption covers every part of every private or group chat, and means we can never read your messages, listen to your calls or scan the media your share. Since we don’t have access to your chats, neither advertising providers nor brands can access your chats.

Rest assured – the content of your chats stays in your chats always and never will be used for showing your relevant ads (as some other messaging apps do).

Keep Viber safe and report inappropriate ads

We are committed to making sure that the ads you see are relevant and appropriate for everyone. Help us keep this promise – if you come across an ad you feel is inappropriate, please take the moment to report it, and make Viber better for everyone.

When you report an ad from the button at the top of the ad, our team quickly responds, inspects the ad, and takes the relevant action to make sure it won’t bother anyone else on Viber.

You also have the power to hide individual ads that you don’t like. All you need to do is tap on the button at the top of the ad, and then choose “Hide”.

Thank you for choosing Viber to chat with friends and family. We will continue to ensure your chats stay private, safe, and completely free, for you to chat with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

In December we celebrated our 8th birthday – a really incredible milestone! Over the past eight years, you have made Viber an essential part of your everyday life and exchanged trillions of messages and call minutes. Thank you – we are truly humbled and honored.

Now that the new year has kicked off, we are super excited to announce the launch of the New Viber 10 — a new look for the Viber app, more ways to connect you with others and additional privacy measures.

A Better, Faster App

Reliability and stability are important to you in the messaging app you use every day, so this is what guided us on this important project.

Over the last year, we have put a lot of effort into improving the quality and performance of Viber’s services. Sending messages has become 2x faster than ever, while voice and video calls have received a quality boost to become crystal clear.

Seeing the exciting impact these changes had, we decided it was time you had a messaging app that looks the same way as it performs – simpler, faster, more modern, and sleeker.

A Simpler, Sleeker Look

The most noticeable change you can expect is a new, bright and light header across the app. Don’t worry, Violet is still Viber’s color, and you will still see it on the app.

Get exactly what you need, right where you expect it: Access all of your private and group chats, Communities and favorite public content in the main chat list. No need to switch between different screens.

Find your recent calls and access your phone contacts in the new Calls screen. You can even see your Viber Out balance and subscriptions at the top of the screen.

New, Exciting Ways to Connect

As you spend more time in Communities on Viber, you will meet more and more new people who you wish to chat with directly.

Viber 10 includes Hidden-number Chats in Communities – a new, safe way for you to make new friends who share the same passions as you. Start chatting with them on Viber without revealing both sides’ phone numbers, until you both decide to do so.

We have added these chats to encourage you to spark spontaneous connections with other community members, knowing that you are still protecting your privacy.

What else?

Group Calls will arrive on Viber very soon, giving you the ability to take part in a voice call with up to 5 people at the same time. Yay!

New Viber, Same Commitment to Privacy

Viber is *still* the most secure messenger around.

The new Viber was developed with the same commitment we have always had to keep your data and chats totally safe and private.

We don’t read your chats, listen to your calls or share your data. This is simply because we applied our end-to-end encryption by default to all of your private chats, groups chats, and Viber voice and video calls.

Don’t wait!

Every part of the new Viber is designed with hard work and care to make your chats simpler, faster, safer and better than ever. We made sure every change to the app adds value to you as a user of Viber, and we believe you will see that value too!

Get the new Viber – update your app on the App Store or Google Play store now.

People’s privacy and how this privacy is protected by the companies who have access to data is a major concern for people worldwide.

At Viber, we are committed to giving you the very highest levels of privacy across the app, and choice and control over the data needed to allow Viber to run its service.

Following the success of additional privacy measures released to Viber users in Europe last May, we are now adding these features for Viber users worldwide so that you can all benefit from using the most secure messaging app.

Protecting Young Viber Users

One of our main priorities is to make sure that Viber is a safe space for the youngest users. To make that into reality, young people between 13 (the minimum age allowed on the app) and 16 years of age who use Viber are protected by default by the highest privacy settings on the app.

These settings ensure that their data can’t be used for targeted services including ads, names and images are not shown to chatbots and their location can’t be shared with third parties.

To enforce this, you should expect to see a prompt to confirm your age in the upcoming days. For Viber users between the ages of 13 and 16, we will activate the most protective privacy settings.

Promoting Control Over the Data You Share

Offering you more transparency and better control over the very limited amount of data that we need to collect in order to provide Viber services, is our way of ensuring you own your data.

The Personal Data screen now contains new tools for you to better control and know about your personal data on Viber. Find this screen when you tap on Settings > Privacy.

Reminder: What Makes Viber The Most Secure Messenger?

Viber gives you a range of powerful ways to protect your own privacy and security on the app as well as our protection promise as standard. Make sure that you stay as protected as you can by always keeping your Viber app up to date. These tools include:

End-to-End Encryption

The Viber standard: We don’t read your messages, listen to your calls or scan your images. We don’t use your private conversation content to make a profit because we can’t see it. Our end-to-end encryption protects your privacy as default on all private and group chats and calls.

No Content is Saved On Our Servers

If there is a delay in delivering the message to your conversation partner, your message will wait patiently on Viber’s servers – in fully encrypted code – until the other phone is ready to receive it. The successfully delivered content of your personal chats and calls is never copied onto Viber’s servers, nor does it leave any kind of trace.

Delete Messages Anytime

You can delete any messages that you regret sending from both your device and the people you’ve sent it to – at any time. Deleting the message totally removes it from both your device and your friend’s device even if they’ve already seen it. Once deleted, that content can never been seen again.

Secret Chats

Get that added touch of extra privacy when you send messages in Secret Chats. Secret Chats allow you to send a self-destruct timer for every message you send in the chat. Your recipient can’t take a screenshot of the chat on Android, or you will receive a notification if someone tried to forward or screenshot the message on an iPhone. In addition, there is no preview for images and videos on Secret Chat, they are blurred out until they are opened, and of course they will disappear once the timer has run out.

Hidden Chats

If you want a conversation that won’t even appear in your chats list, Viber has you covered here too with Hidden Chats. These chats are normal chats but they are kept in a secret section of the app that you can only access with a PIN.

Control Over Your Online Status

Hide your online status to control whether other users can see when you last used your Viber app. You can also hide the delivery status of the messages that they send you, so they can’t tell whether or not you have read it.

Access Viber’s fully private and secure messages. Update the app now!