Honk goes live for iPhone users; brings instant messaging, disappearing chats and more

With the launch of Honk, iPhone users get a new real-time application that offers instant messaging. After months of testing, the application that’s only launched for iOS is trying to give its users an in-the-moment messaging experience. Now what does it mean? Honk allows users to view messages as and when they are typed. If a user is thinking about something, making a typo and editing it, using extra space, whatever is done, other users can see it. Therefore, the application does not even have a send button as the company believes there is no need for it. The application is available for all iOS users globally and offers only 160 characters, which is the size of a traditional SMS text message.

It is important to keep the words to 160 characters in order to say something. If the character limit is breached, a refresh button will hit, and the user will have to start typing from the start. Also, it is said that Honk does not save any chat history. It is to note that Honk has tried to pioneer the disappearing message feature that was initially brought by Snapchat and later adopted by Facebook-owned apps. The real-time messaging app also seems to have taken the concept of real-time from Google Docs.

Interestingly, the company has named the application Honk because it will literally allow people to Honk in order to seek someone’s attention. If any user is out of the application and someone else sends messages, there is a high chance that the phone will be flooded with notifications and a notification will also be sent if a person turns off the application.

Apart from disappearing messages, Honk also has some customisation features that will allow users to change the colour of the conversation bubbles or pick a preferred emoji skin colour. There are some assigned emojis to a word or phrase which the company termed it as “Magic Words”. Therefore, every time anyone will type that certain word or phrase, the selected emoji for it will appear next to the word. There are other features like emoji “Reactions” as well as “Send with Echo”. Honk is currently missing dark mode.