How Orbit works.

Getting started

Orbit runs on the web at orbitsocial.net and in the Orbit app for iOS and Android. The same account works on both.

Signing up on the web asks for a display name, a username, an email address you control, your date of birth, and a password of at least ten characters with upper and lower case, a number, and a symbol. The app can create an account from an email and a password alone, and asks for your username the first time you open your profile. You must be at least 13 to have an account.

The web follows your system light or dark setting, with a toggle in the sidebar. The app is dark-only for now, on every device and every system setting. That is a decision, not a missing feature.

You do not need an account to look around. Feed, profiles, posts, clips, rooms, events, live streams, and Marketplace are all readable signed out. Posting, following, messaging, and everything under Settings need an account.

Things that do not exist yet

You cannot change the email address on an account, and you cannot deactivate an account temporarily. Both are called out in the places you would look for them.

How the two feeds differ

Home has two tabs. They pull the same posts and treat them very differently.

Following

Strictly chronological and complete: every top-level post from every account you follow, newest first. Nothing is injected, nothing is ranked, and nothing you have already seen is skipped. This is the first of the ten promises. On the web your own posts appear in Following too. In the app they do not. Home opens on For You, so switch to Following each time if that is the one you want.

For You

The same posts, reordered on your own device. Nothing is scored on a server. Which posts were shown to you is recorded and feeds ranking and distribution, and only you can read those records. The signals in the ordering are:

• How recent the post is, which carries the most weight and halves in value roughly every twelve hours.
• Likes, comments, and reposts, with diminishing returns.
• A small lift for posts carrying video or images.
• A lift for accounts under 100 followers or with five or fewer posts, fading out over the author's first 48 hours.
• Your topic preferences from Settings, Content Preferences: a topic marked see more is nudged up, see less is nudged down, matched against the hashtags in the post.
• A push down for posts behind a content warning if you set sensitive content to Less.

On the web, For You also spaces out consecutive posts from the same author so one person cannot fill the screen. Nobody can pay for a higher position.

What both tabs leave out

Replies, clips, and posts made inside a room never appear in Home. Clips have their own tab and room posts stay in their room. Posts from accounts you muted, posts matching your muted words, and posts you marked not interested are removed after each page loads, so a page can come back shorter than a full one.

Signed out, there is one public timeline instead of the two tabs.

Posting, comments, and reposts

Compose from the plus button. You can save a draft, schedule a post for later, and find both under Drafts and Scheduled.

Every post has an audience: public, or close friends only. Close friends is a list you keep in Settings, Close Friends, and the people on it are never told they are on it.

Who can comment

Set per post, at compose time or afterwards from the post's menu: everyone, people you follow, or nobody. People you follow means the commenter has to be someone you follow. You can always comment on your own post. The rule is enforced by the database, not just hidden in the interface.

Comments

Comments go two levels deep: a comment on a post, and replies to that comment. You can sort by top or newest, and you can pin exactly one comment on each of your own posts. Pinning a second one unpins the first.

Reposts and quotes

Repost to send a post to your followers as-is, or quote it to add your own text. Undo a repost the same way you made it.

Moments and the 24-hour rule

A moment is a photo or a short video that disappears 24 hours after you post it. Video moments recorded in the app are capped at 30 seconds, and each moment plays for about five seconds in the viewer. You can add text, a mention sticker, and a link sticker.

Moments have two audiences: public, or close friends. There is no per-person hide list. Note that turning on a private account does not cover your moments, so close friends is the control to use when you want a small audience.

On your own moments you can open the viewers list and see exactly who watched. Other people cannot reply with text: tapping a reaction sends you an emoji as a direct message and a notification.

What happens at 24 hours

Expiry is a deletion, not an archive. A cleanup job removes expired moments from Orbit shortly after the 24 hours are up, so treat a moment as gone at that point. Your Moments screen lists your own moments while they are still there. If you want to keep something, keep your own copy of the file before you post it.

Orbit sends at most one prompt a day suggesting you post a moment. It arrives at a different hour each day so it never becomes a routine.

Clips and loops

Clips are short vertical videos on their own tab. The clips feed is chronological, newest first. It is not ranked.

Loops

A loop is counted every time a clip plays past its end and starts again. Loops accumulate while you watch; you do not have to do anything.

Loop it is the clips version of a repost: it sends the clip to your followers. You cannot Loop your own clip. Tapping it again undoes it.

Best Loops

A short shelf pinned to the top of the clips feed, refreshed weekly and picked by hand by the Orbit team. Clips on it carry a Best Loops badge. There is no submission form and no way to nominate a clip.

Making a clip

In the app, hold the record button on the clip camera. You get eight seconds in total and can spread them across several takes. On the web there is no camera: you upload a video file up to 50MB.

The app splits clips into two lanes. All is everything; Loops is clips of eight seconds or less, the length that reads as a loop rather than a video.

Clips carry sound credit, so a clip without a chosen sound gets an original sound credited to you and other people can find everything made with it. Orbit does not mix or overlay audio for you.

Rooms

Rooms are small group spaces with their own posts, rules, and moderators. A room post never appears in Home or Discover, and Home never leaks into a room.

Joining

Each room picks one of three settings. Open rooms let you join instantly. Approval rooms turn your tap into a request that an owner or moderator accepts or declines. Invite-only rooms cannot be joined at all until someone invites you.

A private room is hidden from listings and from search, and its posts are only readable by members.

Roles

Owner, moderator, member. Only the owner can promote or demote a moderator or remove a member, and the owner cannot be removed. Owners and moderators approve join requests, invite people, and pin a post; a post's own author can pin it too.

Rules and slow mode

A room can carry rules you accept before your first post. An owner can also set slow mode, anywhere from off to six hours between posts. Owners and moderators are exempt from it.

Events

Anyone signed in can create an event: title, description, start and end time, timezone, a cover image, and either a physical location or an online link. An event can be attached to a room. The host is counted as going straight away.

RSVP as going or interested. The attendee number counts people going; the guest list shows both. Hosts can add co-hosts, and only the host can delete the event. Events have comments with replies, and the list page shows events from today forward, soonest first.

If you RSVP going and have event notifications on, Orbit reminds you about fifteen minutes before the start.

There is no ticketing, no paid entry, no capacity limit or waitlist, and no calendar export.

Marketplace

Marketplace is a listings board on its own tab, kept out of the feed on purpose. A listing carries photos, a price, a category (Electronics, Clothing, Home, Sports, or Other), a condition, and a location. You can save a search and pick it up again on your other device.

How a sale actually happens

The only buyer action is Message seller, which opens a normal direct message. Orbit does not process payments, hold funds, ship anything, or offer refunds. There is no checkout, no cart, and no escrow. You and the other person arrange payment and handover between yourselves, and the risk is yours. Sellers mark their own listings sold. See the Terms of Service for the full position.

Live

Going live means sending video from a real encoder. Settings, Streaming gives you an RTMPS URL, an SRT URL, and your stream key, and walks through OBS Studio on a computer, Belabox or IRLToolkit for a backpack setup, and Larix Broadcaster on a phone. You go live the moment your encoder starts pushing; you go offline when it stops. There is no browser or in-app broadcast button.

Your stream key does not expire and you cannot rotate it yourself. If it leaks, email support@orbitsocial.net and it will be replaced. Treat it like a password: anyone holding it can broadcast as you.

You can set a title, category, up to five tags, a language, a mature flag, chat slow mode, and followers-only chat. Chat messages are capped at 500 characters, and chat closes when the stream ends.

Replays are saved for you automatically when the stream ends. They appear under Past streams, and you can rename or delete your own.

Gifts on a stream are free reactions. There is no currency, no purchase, and no payout attached to them.

The Live tab lists every stream running right now across Orbit, busiest first. It is discovery, not a feed of the people you follow.

Messages and message requests

Direct messages come in one-to-one threads and group threads.

Who can start a chat with you

Settings, Privacy has three options: everyone, people you follow, or no one. It governs first contact only. Once you have sent a message in a thread, that thread stays open regardless of the setting. People you follow means the sender has to be someone you follow. Group threads are exempt.

Requests

A thread from someone you do not follow, that you have never opened and never replied to, waits in Requests instead of your inbox. Opening it accepts it, and it moves to the inbox. Declining hides the thread rather than deleting it, so if that person writes again it comes back as a fresh request.

Read receipts

Reciprocal. Turn yours off in Settings, Privacy and you stop seeing other people's too. Group threads never show read state at all.

Privacy controls

Most of these live in Settings, Privacy on the web. Private account, hiding your follower lists, and hiding your Likes tab are web-only settings today; they still apply everywhere once set.

Private account

Only approved followers can see your posts, and that is enforced by the database rather than by the interface, so it holds for signed-out visitors too. Your profile card, bio, and counts stay visible. New follows arrive as requests under Notifications, Requests, where you approve or decline them, and you can remove a follower you already have. Private account covers your posts; it does not cover your moments, so use close friends there.

The rest

• Hide activity status.Stops Orbit showing when you were last active in messages. Reciprocal: with it on you cannot see anyone else's either.
• Hide your followers and following. The counts stay public, the lists stop opening for anyone but you.
• Hide your Likes tab. Other people stop seeing what you liked. You still see it on your own profile.
• Read receipts. Reciprocal, as above.
• Hide like counts, in Settings, Content Preferences. This one is about what yousee: like counts on other people's posts disappear for you, and your own posts still show yours. It does not hide your counts from anyone else.
• Sensitive content and topic preferences, also in Content Preferences, tune how much potentially sensitive content reaches your feeds and nudge For You toward or away from a topic.
• Time on Orbit. Your daily minutes and an optional once-a-day reminder past a threshold you pick. The counting stays on your device and never leaves it.

Location is off unless you turn it on, and every change you make to these settings is recorded so nothing about your account shifts without a trace.

Block, mute, restrict, and muted words

Four tools that do genuinely different things. Pick by what you want the other person to experience.

Block: mutual and hard

Blocking cuts both directions. Their posts disappear for you and yours disappear for them, any follows between you are removed, each of you drops off the other's close friends list, pending follow requests are cleared, and neither of you can start a one-to-one message with the other. A group thread you are both in is deliberately left alone. A block stays in place until you remove it from Settings, Privacy.

Mute: one-way and silent

Muting hides that account's posts and clips from your feeds. Nothing else changes: their profile still opens, their comments still show, their messages still arrive, and notifications from them still reach you. They are never told. A mute can be set to expire on its own.

Restrict: invisible

Restricting someone hides their comments on posts and clips from you, and stops them seeing when you have read their messages. They can still follow you, message you, and see your posts, and they are not told anything changed. Manage the list in Settings, Privacy on the web, or Restricted accounts in the app.

Muted words

Settings, Word Filters on the web, Muted words in the app. A muted word hides matching posts from Home, hides matching clips, and hides matching comments. If a push notification's preview contains one, the push is not sent.

Two limits worth knowing. Matching is on whole words, so “cat” hides “cat!” but not “category”. And muted words are not applied to direct messages, to search results, or to the in-app notifications list: a notification whose push was withheld is still there when you open the tab.

Notifications and quiet hours

Settings, Notifications has a switch for each kind: likes, comments, reposts and quotes, mentions, moment replies, direct messages, new followers, posts from creators whose bell you rang, live streams, events, Marketplace, and rooms. Turning one off stops the notification being created at all, so it will not be waiting in the tab either.

The bell on someone's profile is separate from following them: it tells Orbit to notify you about their new posts without changing anything about your feed.

Quiet hours

Pick a start and end hour and Orbit stops sending push notifications inside that window, in your own local time. Whole hours only. Quiet hours suppress the push, not the notification: everything is waiting in the app when you look.

Why push is scarcer than you might expect

Notifications where a person deliberately reached out (a message, a mention, a comment, a new follower) always push. Ambient ones (likes, reposts, quotes, someone going live, event reminders, invites, moment reactions) are capped at three pushes per week each, on purpose, so push stays worth reading. The notifications themselves are all still in the app.

Turning push on

On the web, push is per browser: enable it in Settings, Notifications in each browser you use, and allow the browser prompt. In the app, allow notifications when asked, or in your device's system settings for Orbit afterwards.

Email

One daily digest, off or on, with a one-click unsubscribe link in every send. Account email such as a password reset always goes out.

Two-factor and sign-in security

Settings, Security on both platforms.

Two-factor

Orbit supports one second factor: a time-based code from an authenticator app. Scan the QR code or type the setup key, confirm one six-digit code, and it is on. There is no SMS option, no emailed code, and no passkey or hardware key support.

Turning it on gives you eight backup codes. Read this part before you close that screen:

• They are shown once. Orbit keeps only a hash, so nobody, including support, can show them to you again.
• There is no way to regenerate them.
• Using one turns two-factor off entirely and destroys the remaining codes. It is a way back into your account, not a way to sign in. Set two-factor up again straight afterwards.

Sign-in activity and sessions

Your recent sign-ins are listed with the device, the IP address, and whether the attempt succeeded: Settings, Security, Login activity on the web, where you can also flag one as not you, and Settings, Sessions in the app. Sign out other sessions signs out every device except the one you are on. There is no per-device revoke list.

Password

Change it in Settings, Account on the web. You need your current password, and the new one needs at least ten characters with upper and lower case, a number, and a symbol. Forgot it? Use the reset link on the sign-in screen.

Your data, and leaving

Settings, Download Your Data hands you a JSON file straight away, no queue and no email. It contains your profile, your posts with their media and counts, who you follow, who follows you, your bookmarks, your likes, the accounts you muted and blocked, and the record of which posts were shown to you and what you did from them. You can run it once every ten minutes. The app links out to the same page on the web.

Direct messages are deliberately not in the export. A conversation belongs to everyone in it, so exporting it would hand you other people's messages.

Leaving

There is no deactivation. Orbit cannot put your account to sleep and wake it later. Deleting is the only exit, and it is permanent.

Deletion lives in Settings, Account, behind typing DELETE to confirm. It runs immediately: no grace period, no scheduled purge, nothing to restore, no way to cancel. Your posts, reposts, reactions, and messages go with you. If two-factor is on you have to be signed in at the second factor to do it. Export your data first if you want it.

Two things survive on purpose. A room you founded keeps running for its members, and moderation records stay on file with your identity removed.

Reporting content and appealing a decision

Report a post from its menu, and an account from the menu on its profile. On the web, comments carry the same menu. In the app, long press a direct message to report it. Pick a reason (spam, harassment, hate speech, violence, nudity, or other) and add details if they help.

Live streams, moments, rooms, events, and Marketplace listings do not have a report button yet. Email support@orbitsocial.net with a link and what is wrong, and it reaches the same place.

Account status

Settings, Account Status is the whole record: whether your account is in good standing, every enforcement action against it with the reason and date, anything an automated filter flagged, and the reports you filed with their current status. Nothing is enforced against you silently. That is one of the ten promises.

Appeals

Every action on the list can be appealed once, in up to 2,000 characters, from the same page. A person reads it. The outcome, upheld or reversed, appears next to the action on that page. Orbit does not notify you when it changes, so check back. Automated content flags are not appealable on their own; if one is wrong, email support@orbitsocial.net.

Contact and support

Orbit is small and there is no phone line or live chat. Email reaches a person.

• support@orbitsocial.net for anything: bugs, account trouble, a report that has no in-app button, rotating a leaked stream key, or a moderation question Account Status does not answer.
• privacy@orbitsocial.net for privacy questions and requests about your personal data. See the Privacy Policy.
• dmca@orbitsocial.net for copyright notices and counter-notices. The postal address for the designated agent is in the Terms of Service.

We read everything that arrives. We do not publish a response time, because we would rather say nothing than post a number we cannot keep to. Appeals and account-access problems go first.

Reporting a bug? Tell us what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead, and include which build you were on. In the app, Settings, Help & About, About has a Copy diagnostics button that puts the version, system, and device on your clipboard. There is a full write-up on the contact page.

Troubleshooting

Push notifications are not arriving

Work down this list, most common first:

• The type is switched off in Settings, Notifications. A disabled type produces nothing at all, not even an in-app notification.
• You are inside your quiet hours. The push is withheld; the notification is in the app.
• You already had three ambient pushes this week. Likes, reposts, quotes, live starts, event reminders, invites, and moment reactions share that weekly cap. Messages, mentions, comments, and new followers are not capped.
• A muted word matched the notification preview, which withholds the push.
• For a missing message notification, check whether that conversation is muted.
• On the web, push is granted per browser. Enable it in Settings, Notifications in the browser you are actually using, and check the site is not blocked in the browser's own notification permissions.
• In the app, check that notifications are allowed for Orbit in your device settings, and that the device is not in a system focus or do-not-disturb mode.

A video will not play

• Reload the page or reopen the screen first. Most playback failures are a dropped connection mid-stream.
• Clips and post video play straight from storage, so a large file on a weak connection can stall at the start. Give it a moment on mobile data.
• Live streams and replays are delivered as adaptive streams. If a live stream is buffering, the broadcaster's upload may be the problem rather than your connection. In the app you can cap the resolution on the stream screen.
• If it is still broken, send us the link and your diagnostics from Settings, Help & About, About.

I cannot sign in

• Use Forgot password on the sign-in screen. The reset link arrives by email and opens straight into a new password.
• With two-factor on you need the six-digit code from your authenticator app after your password. If you have lost the app, use a backup code: it signs you in and switches two-factor off, so set it up again immediately.
• No backup codes and no authenticator is not recoverable by support, because Orbit never holds your codes in readable form.
• Seeing “too many requests”? Sign-in attempts are rate limited per network. Wait a minute and try again.
• The email on an account cannot be changed yet, so an account is tied to the address you signed up with.

Posts from someone I follow are missing

• Check you are on Following, not For You. Following is the complete, in-order one.
• Check your muted accounts and muted words. Both filter Following as well as For You.
• If you follow a very large number of accounts, Orbit reads the first 1,000 follows when it builds the feed. Past that, some accounts will not appear.
• They may have gone private, blocked you, or posted to their close friends.