Forget Zoom, Meet, and FaceTime: This video-chat app beats them all
Yep is free and works on any device, anywhere—no downloads, sign-ins, or data-sharing required.
BY JR Raphael
At this point, video chatting has become a common part of our day-to-day lives—and yet, when you really stop and think about it, it tends to be a pretty awful experience.
Whether you’re using Meet, Zoom, or any other such service, starting a virtual face-to-face chat inevitably involves a lot of annoyances. You’ve gotta download something, create an account or sign in, and share all sorts of personal info with the company behind it.
Plus, you’ve gotta hope (or, more likely, just blindly assume) that everyone else involved in your call has access to the same platform and then force them to download something, sign up, and sign in, too. Ugh.
So what if there were a better way—a dead-simple video-chatting app that, to borrow a term, Just Worked™? No setup, no sign-ins, no downloads. Use it anywhere, on any device, without sharing any personal info.
My friend, such an option exists. Most people just have no idea it’s out there.
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Video chat, without the hassles
The service I want to share with you today has one of the best names I’ve ever encountered anywhere in tech.
Allow me to introduce you to—drumroll, please . . .—?Yep?. Yep? Yep.
? Yep is a completely free browser-based service that lets you start an instant video-chat room with anyone, anywhere, in seconds flat.
? It will quite literally take you 10 seconds to get up and running. Maybe even less.
All you do is open up the Yep website?, hit the button to Chat Now, and—well, that’s pretty much it. The very first time you do it, you’ll probably have to tell your browser that it’s okay for the site to access your camera and microphone. But there’s really nothing more to it, and you’ll be in a virtual room and ready to chat with anyone faster than you can say “in your face, FaceTime.”
Yep is supremely simple, and it works everywhere—so long as you’ve got a browser.
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From there, things continue to be about as simple as can be:
- You can use buttons to send anyone else a link via email or text message to invite them in (with up to 12 people total at any given time).
- You can mute your audio or pause your camera.
- And you can share your screen—in fact, in an interesting twist, anyone can share their screen at the same time, simultaneously.
Oh—and if you’d rather create a room in advance for later use, there’s a button to do that on the main Yep home page, too.
One click—that’s it. How ’bout them apples?!
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And, again, since Yep works right in your browser, it’ll work on any type of device—Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Chromebook, internet-connected armadillo, whatever—without any arbitrary restrictions, required downloads, or annoying sign-ins involved. It doesn’t even have any limits for how long or how often you can use it, as of now.
A Cool Tool to keep handy in your virtual pocket, wouldn’t ya say?
- You can access Yep via its website? in any browser, on any device. There is nothing to install, though you can ?add the site as a progressive web app? in browsers that support it for even easier ongoing access.
- Yep is completely free to use and even ad-free. (I assume there’ll be some manner of optional premium plan or add-on before long.)
- It doesn’t require any accounts, sign-ins, or personal info whatsoever, and ?the service’s privacy policy? doesn’t have anything eyebrow-raising.
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