SaathiO User Guide

Getting Started

Downloading SaathiO

SaathiO is available on the Google Play Store. Search for "SaathiO" or visit our website. The app requires Android 7.0 (Nougat) or later and approximately 80 MB of free storage.

Creating Your Account

SaathiO ID Rules

• 3 to 20 characters long
• Only lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and underscore (_)
• Cannot start with a number
• Must be unique — checked in real time during setup
• You can change it later in Settings → Edit Profile

Phone Number Verification

SaathiO uses phone-based authentication via Firebase. Your phone number is verified once during account creation. We support numbers from 53 countries including India (+91), USA (+1), UK (+44), Canada (+1), Australia (+61), and many more. Your phone number is never publicly displayed to other users — only your display name and SaathiO ID are visible.

Home Screen

The Home Screen is your central hub. Everything in SaathiO is accessible from here.

Top Bar

• SaathiO Logo — top left corner with the app name
• Bell Icon 🔔 — opens the Notifications Center. A red badge shows unread count. Notifications include: new messages, missed calls, mood reactions, thought reactions, clip likes, comments, and new followers.
• Refresh Icon ↻ — pull down or tap to refresh the home screen content

Feature Cards

The home screen displays a grid of cards, each leading to a major feature:

• Greeting & Weather — shows a personalized greeting based on time of day ("Good morning, Somesh!") along with current weather for your location
• AI Chat — tap to open a conversation with SaathiO's AI assistant
• Chat — your messages and contacts
• Thoughts — social feed with posts, clips, and live video
• Games — 6 built-in games
• Music — local music player
• Email — built-in email client
• Notes — private note-taking
• Voice Recorder — audio recording
• Alarms — alarms and reminders
• News — latest news headlines
• Settings — all app settings and security options

Chat & Messages

Opening Chat

Tap the Chat card on the home screen. Your contacts who use SaathiO appear automatically. Tap any contact to open a conversation.

Sending Messages

• Text Messages — type in the message box at the bottom and tap the send arrow. Messages are delivered instantly when both users are online.
• Voice Notes — press and hold the microphone icon to record. Release to send. The recording is shown as a waveform in the chat with a play button.
• Photos & Videos — tap the attachment icon (📎) to select media from your gallery or take a new photo/video with your camera.
• Emoji — tap the smiley face icon to open the emoji keyboard with hundreds of options.

Message Status Indicators

Read Aloud

Long-press any received message to hear it read aloud using your configured voice settings. This is especially useful for accessibility or when you're driving. The app translates the message to your preferred language before reading it aloud if you have "Translate Before Reading" enabled in Voice Settings.

Contact Categories

Organize contacts into groups like Family, Friends, Work, VIP, etc. Each category can have its own notification settings (sound, vibration, popup), privacy settings (who sees your Last Seen), and custom colors.

You can also access this from Settings → Contact Categories.

Voice & Video Calls

SaathiO offers high-quality voice and video calls powered by Agora's real-time communication technology. Calls are end-to-end encrypted and not recorded.

Making a Call

During a Call

• Mute / Unmute — toggle your microphone on/off
• Speaker — switch between earpiece and loudspeaker
• Video On/Off — toggle camera during video calls
• Flip Camera — switch between front and rear camera
• End Call — tap the red phone icon to hang up

Incoming Calls

When someone calls you, a branded SaathiO call screen appears with the caller's name and avatar — even when the app is in the background or your phone is locked. Swipe the green icon to accept or the red icon to decline.

Email

SaathiO has a built-in email client so you can read and send emails without switching apps.

Connecting Your Email

Supported Providers

Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo, Rediffmail, AOL, iCloud, and any provider that supports IMAP/SMTP.

Features

• Inbox — view emails with sender, subject, date, and preview snippet
• Compose — write new emails with To, Subject, and Body fields
• Reply / Forward — respond to emails inline
• HTML Rendering — newsletters and marketing emails display properly with images and formatting
• Pull to Refresh — pull down to check for new emails

Thoughts

Thoughts is SaathiO's social feed — a micro-blogging platform where you share what's on your mind with the community.

Feed Tabs

Categories

Filter posts using the scrollable category pills at the top: All, National, International, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, Health, Business, and more.

Posting a Thought

Your post appears in the Public feed immediately. Others can like, comment, and share your thoughts.

Going Live

Tap the red camera button 🎥 (bottom right on Public or Clips tab) to start a live video broadcast. Your followers receive a notification. Viewers can watch and react in real time. The stream uses Agora's real-time technology for smooth, low-latency video.

Moods

Moods are status updates that automatically disappear after 24 hours — like WhatsApp Status or Instagram Stories.

• View Moods — colored circles at the top of the Thoughts screen represent your contacts' moods. Tap to view.
• Post a Mood — tap your own mood circle (first position) to post a new update. Share a photo, video, or text that will vanish after 24 hours.
• React — swipe up on someone's mood to send an emoji reaction. They'll see your reaction as a notification.
• Privacy — moods respect your privacy settings. If you've set "Profile Photo" to "My Contacts", only your contacts can see your moods.

Watching Clips

Clips is SaathiO's short-form video platform with built-in monetization — similar to Instagram Reels or TikTok, but creators earn real money from every view.

Browsing Clips

Go to Thoughts → Clips tab. Clips appear in a vertical feed with rounded cards and a small gap between each clip. Swipe up to see the next clip, swipe down for the previous one. Each clip auto-plays when it comes into view.

Sub-Tabs

Duration Filters

Use the pills at the top (All, 90s, 180s) to filter clips by their duration category.

Interacting with Clips

Clip Header Icons

At the top of the Clips tab, next to the Upload button:

• + Upload — record or select a clip to publish
• Crown 👑 — view and manage subscription plans
• Person 👤 — open your own creator profile

View Count

The eye icon (👁) at the top-right of each clip shows total views. A view is counted after watching for at least 3 seconds.

Comment Preview

Below each clip's caption, the latest comment appears in a dark bar. Tap it to open the full comments sheet. If there are multiple comments, the bar shows "View all X comments."

Creating Clips

Recording or Uploading

Video Processing

After uploading, your video is processed by Bunny Stream CDN. The video is converted into HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) format for smooth playback across all devices and network speeds. A thumbnail is also generated automatically.

Duration Categories & Ads

Monthly Upload Limits

Earning Money from Clips

SaathiO shares ad revenue with all creators. Every time a viewer sees an ad on your clip, you earn money.

Revenue Model

• Creator gets 55% of ad revenue from their clips
• SaathiO retains 45% for platform operation and development
• 90-second clips show 1 ad per view
• 180-second clips show up to 3 ads per view — earning up to 3x more
• Revenue is the same percentage regardless of subscription tier

Viewing Your Earnings

Payout Details

Subscription Plans

SaathiO offers tiered subscriptions for creators who want more uploads, longer clips, and professional tools.

How to Subscribe

Games

SaathiO includes 6 built-in games with progressive difficulty. No downloads, no in-app purchases — just play.

Access games from the Home Screen → Games card. A short video ad may play before starting a game (this helps fund creator revenue).

Music Player

SaathiO includes a built-in music player for your local music library. No subscription required.

• Library Scan — the player automatically scans your device for MP3, AAC, OGG, and other audio files
• Playback Controls — play, pause, skip forward/back, seek bar, shuffle, repeat (one/all)
• Floating Mini Player — when you navigate away from the music screen, a floating mini player appears at the bottom of the app for quick controls
• Background Playback — music keeps playing when the app is in the background or screen is locked
• Now Playing — shows album art (if available), song title, artist name, and progress

Notes

A private, offline-first note-taking tool built into SaathiO.

• Create — tap the + button to create a new note with a title and body text
• Edit — tap any note to open and edit it
• Delete — swipe left or tap the delete icon to remove a note
• Storage — notes are stored locally using Hive (fast, encrypted, offline-capable). They are not uploaded to any server.
• Privacy — notes are 100% private and visible only to you

Voice Recorder

Record voice memos, lectures, meetings, or interviews directly within SaathiO.

• Record — tap the large red record button to start. A timer shows elapsed time.
• Stop & Save — tap stop to end recording. It's saved automatically with timestamp.
• Playback — tap any recording in the list to play it back with a seek bar
• Recordings List — all recordings shown with date, time, and duration
• Delete — swipe to delete unwanted recordings

Alarms

Set alarms and reminders that work reliably even when the app is closed.

• Set Time — choose hour and minute using the time picker
• Label — add a description (e.g., "Take medicine", "Team standup")
• Repeat — set to one-time, daily, weekdays only, weekends only, or custom days
• Toggle — enable/disable alarms without deleting them
• Reliability — alarms use system-level notifications via flutter_local_notifications, so they persist across app restarts and device reboots

AI Chat

SaathiO includes an AI assistant for conversations, questions, advice, creative writing, and more.

• Access — tap the "Chat with SaathiO AI" card on the home screen
• Capabilities — answer questions, write messages, translate text, explain concepts, brainstorm ideas, and have open-ended conversations
• Privacy — AI conversations are private and not shared with other users or used for advertising
• Offline — if you're offline, a friendly message explains the AI needs an internet connection instead of showing a technical error

News Feed

Stay updated with the latest news, curated from trusted RSS sources. The news feed appears on your home screen and refreshes automatically. Tap any headline to read the full article in an in-app browser.

Edit Profile

Customize how other users see you. Go to Settings → tap your profile at the top of the settings list.

What You Can Edit

Read-Only Fields

• Phone Number — your login credential, cannot be changed (shown with a lock icon)
• Email — shown if set, cannot be changed from this screen

Changes save to your profile database and automatically sync to your Clips creator profile via a server-side trigger — no need to update in two places.

Privacy Settings

Control who can see your personal information. Go to Settings → Privacy.

App Lock

Protect the entire SaathiO app with a PIN, pattern, or biometric (fingerprint/face) lock.

Setting Up

When enabled, you must authenticate every time you open SaathiO. The lock screen appears immediately when the app is opened or brought to foreground.

Chat Lock

Hide individual conversations behind a separate 6-digit PIN. Locked chats are invisible in the main chat list and don't show notification previews.

Setting Up

Accessing Locked Chats

Go to Chat → tap the "Locked Chats" folder → enter your 6-digit PIN. All your locked conversations appear inside.

Two-Step Verification

Add an extra security layer to your account with a 6-digit PIN required when logging in on a new device.

Setting Up

Three Locks — Three Purposes

Each lock has its own separate PIN. This means maximum security — compromising one does not compromise the others.

Blocked Contacts

Block users who you don't want interacting with you.

What Blocking Does

• Blocked users cannot: see your clips, send you messages, call you, view your thoughts, or see your profile
• Blocked users are not notified when you block or unblock them
• Your existing messages with them remain but no new messages can be sent

How to Block

• From a Clip: Tap creator avatar → tap the Block icon → confirm
• From Creator Profile: Tap Block button → confirm

Managing Blocked Contacts

Go to Settings → Blocked Contacts. You'll see a list of all blocked users with their name, username, and when you blocked them. Tap "Unblock" next to any name to remove the block (requires confirmation).

Storage & Data

Storage Usage

Go to Settings → Storage Usage to see exactly how much space SaathiO uses on your device.

• Total usage card — shows overall size with a gradient header
• Color-coded breakdown bar — visual split: blue (images), purple (videos), orange (audio), green (documents), grey (other)
• By File Type — exact size for each category
• By Location — App Cache vs App Data
• "Clear Cache" button — removes temporary files (thumbnails, video previews). Your messages, contacts, and settings are not affected.

Data Saver

Toggle Data Saver in Settings to reduce mobile data usage. When enabled, images load at lower resolution and video thumbnails don't auto-load.

Language

SaathiO supports 26 languages. Change your language in Settings. The entire app interface translates instantly — all buttons, menus, labels, and system messages switch to your chosen language.

Supported Languages

English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Urdu, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian.

Voice & Read Aloud

SaathiO can read messages aloud in your chosen language and voice. Configure in Settings → Voice & Read Aloud.

Theme

SaathiO supports three theme modes: Light, Dark, and Auto (System). Change in Settings → Theme. Auto mode follows your device's system theme setting, automatically switching between light and dark based on time of day or your phone's dark mode toggle.

Notifications

SaathiO sends push notifications for important events. Control them in Settings:

• Notifications — master toggle for all push notifications
• Message Sounds — toggle sound effects for incoming messages
• Per-Category Settings — set custom notification preferences for each Contact Category

Notification Types

• New chat messages
• Missed voice/video calls
• New follower notifications
• Clip likes and comments
• Mood reactions
• Thought reactions

Contact Support