Text chat

Text chat with strangers on OmegleLife works the way Omegle's text mode did: one random person in a chat box, with no camera involved. You don't log in or make a profile. Tick the 18+ box above, add an interest or two, press Start text chat and type. Either of you can leave whenever you like. OmegleLife is not affiliated with Omegle.com.

How text chat with strangers works

While the matcher looks for someone, the window says "Looking for someone you can chat with…". Once it finds a person, you get "You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!", a line naming the country the stranger is connecting from, and "You both like: …" if one of your interests matched. Their messages show up as Stranger: and yours as You:.

Enter sends a message and Shift+Enter starts a new line. A message can run to 1,000 characters, and if you fire off several in a couple of seconds, the box asks you to slow down. While the other person is writing, you'll see "Stranger is typing…", which helps you decide whether to wait for a reply or give up on a quiet chat.

Anonymous chat without login

Anonymous text chat here doesn't use accounts at all, so there's no email to confirm and no username for anyone to look up. The site remembers your 18+ confirmation in a cookie for 30 days, so you don't have to tick the box on every visit. You'd only log in if you bought Premium, and even then it's your email address plus a one-time code.

What the stranger sees, and what we see

The stranger sees the words you send and the country your connection comes from, shown as a line like "Stranger is from Germany" and never as a city. If you have Premium, they also see a PRO badge. Your messages travel through our server on their way to the other person, so the stranger's device never connects to yours and never learns your IP address. Video works differently, and our comparison of text chat vs video chat explains how.

Our servers see your IP address, as any website's do, and use it to work out your country and to apply rate limits and bans. While a chat is open, the server holds its last 50 messages in memory for an hour at most, so a report can include them, and it discards them if the chat isn't reported. A report saves those messages for moderators. We keep them for 90 days by default, then delete them.

A word filter checks messages too. It can block or mask certain words, and links sent by free users arrive as plain text, so a spammer can't drop a one-tap link into your chat. The community guidelines list what gets someone banned.

None of this stops the stranger from copying or screenshotting the conversation. However friendly it gets, leave out your full name, school, workplace, phone number and social handles.

Interests and who you get matched with

You can add up to 10 interests before you start: a band, a game, a country you're curious about, a language you're learning. For a few seconds the matcher looks for someone who typed at least one of the same words, then pairs you with anyone who's waiting, so a rare interest won't leave you stuck in the queue. Mix one broad tag with a couple of specific ones. "Music" next to the name of a band matches more often than the band alone, and when the band does line up, you already know what to ask. Our post on how interest matching works goes into the details.

Text and video have separate queues, so switching modes always means a new stranger.

Ending a chat and finding the next stranger

Press Stop, or Esc on a keyboard. If the chat has been going for a while, the button changes to "Really?" first, and a second press ends it, which protects a good conversation from a stray tap. A chat that's only a few seconds old ends with one press. Then press New. If the stranger leaves first, the log says "Stranger has disconnected." and New is ready straight away.

Skipping is normal in random text chat, and the other person does it too. If a chat was friendly but has stalled, say bye before you press Stop.

Coming from Omegle text chat

Omegle launched in March 2009 and didn't add video until March 2010, according to its Wikipedia entry, so for its first year typing was the only way to talk. The site closed on November 8, 2023, and Omegle text chat closed with it.

If you used it, the layout here will look familiar: the chat log, the Stranger: and You: labels, interests, and Stop, Really? and New. What's new is mostly about safety. You have to be 18 or older. Every chat has a Report button with six reasons, and if several different people report the same person, the system bans them for a while on its own.

Bots and scams in text chat

Anywhere you chat with strangers online, some of the "strangers" are scripts or scammers. The usual giveaways:

• replies that land within a second and ignore what you said
• a link, a username for another app or "check my profile" in the first few messages
• a push to carry on somewhere else, which the FTC lists among the signs of a romance scam
• any mention of money, gift cards or crypto

The FTC's advice on avoiding scams is never to pay someone who insists on crypto, a wire transfer, a payment app or a gift card. If you spot one of these, press Report and pick Spam / scam. That ends the chat as well.

Be careful, too, with anyone who tries to get you on camera or asks for photos. In a 2023 public service announcement, the FBI warned people to be wary of strangers who pressure them for images right away, and said that paying a blackmailer doesn't guarantee the images won't be shared. The safety page explains what to do if it happens to you.

If you think you're chatting with someone under 18, report the chat with the Minor (under 18) reason. If you see anything that looks like child sexual exploitation, also report it to the NCMEC CyberTipline, and call the police if a child is in immediate danger.

Openers that work in text

A bare "hi" leaves all the work to the other person. Give them something to answer instead, like the interest you share or a question about where they are: "what's the weather doing there right now?" If you're practicing a language, say so in your first message. Our post on practicing English with strangers online has a 15-minute routine that suits text, and our list of conversation starters for random chat has openers for when the chat gives you nothing to go on.

Premium in text chat

Premium is optional, and a few of its features matter most in text. An auto-message sends a greeting you've saved, up to 200 characters, the moment you connect. Auto-next starts a new search as soon as a stranger leaves. You can send photos and short videos, which arrive blurred until the other person taps them and are deleted after 24 hours. The country filter helps if you want people from a particular place, and the gender filter goes by what people say about themselves, which nobody checks. Plans are weekly or monthly, and you can cancel in one click.

If you'd rather see who you're talking to, video chat uses the same interests and the same Stop button.