Slowly - Make Global Friends

Category
Lifestyle

Description of App

SLOWLY is created for those who yearn for meaningful conversations, lacking in the era of instant messaging. It connects people around the world at a slower but better pace – one letter at a time.

The app brings the traditional pen pal experience to your mobile device that mailing time depends on the distance between you and your friend, ranging from a few hours to days. Take your time to write and make your letter worth the wait.

Share your passion, learn a new culture or language, start connecting with people around the world on SLOWLY!

Key Features:

- Mailing time depends on the distance between you and your friend

- Anonymous profile; a nickname and avatar are all you need

- Find friends based on mutual interests & languages

- Collect and unlock stamps from different countries and cultures

- Unlimited letters for FREE with optional paid features

Terms of Service:

https://slowly.app/en/terms/

Version

7.2.7

Free or Paid

Free With In-App Purchase

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

15.4

Accessibility Comments

I'll preface this by saying I'm totally blind and using the latest IPhone (13) with screen recognition, as it seems to be needed for me to activate the Send button.
When you initially create your account, you will be presented with the opportunity to enter in a nickname, your gender, birthday, topics of interest, and a bio. You may also create an avatar. This aspect (avatar creation) had to be done with sighted assistance as I accidentally selected a male figure with red hair (I'm a female with black hair, haha), but other than this bit, I have been able to independently use this app for the most part.
The premise of the app is to make friends from around the world by writing letters that take time to get to the recipient, and the time needed is directly related to their distance from you. So, once you've set up your profile, there will be five tabs at the bottom of the screen: Home (your hub to basically see how many letters are coming, your stamp collection, and Slowly testimonials; Friends (the list of people who have either added you or that you've added); Explore (where you can be matched based on interests, age, language, country, etc; Drafts (where you can save your draft letters); and Profile (where you can update your bio, interests, and access Slowly via the Web (using a QR code), which is actually how I like to access it for letters I know will be long ones.
What I've learned is that you get stamps based on your location in the world, holidays, special events, earning achievements, and buying them with coins. If you pay to upgrade, you'll get no ads and 800 coins to buy stamps, as well as unlock all of the avatar choices.
I have found that I need to turn Screen Recognition on in order to hit send, so I can find the stamp button (in the upper righthand corner of the letter), and sometimes to close out a profile. I have it off when I'm actually typing out the letters though. I've only just begun using this as of Saturday evening, so there are probably things I still have to learn.
To access the website, go to Profile, then the upper righthand corner of the screen (will likely say something like Wheel/Cog, "possibly Settings", or Settings Button with screen recognition on)), then go to Slowly for the Web, scan the QR code, and your computer will remain logged in.
VoiceOver reads most things, and stamps are labeled (although sometimes the label doesn't quite describe the stamp, such as Eggs Benedict, but I was surprised they were actually labeled with enough info to generally tell what they were. I think that with Image recognition and screen recognition, this app works quite well.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

Other Comments

What I appreciate about this app is that it is meant to help find pen pals, first and foremost, so when you create your profile, you don't upload your own photos. Instead, you are presented with the opportunity to create an avatar, which I'm told is cartoonish in nature. You can also add an Emoji to make it more expressive. When someone finds you through Auto Matching or manual exploration, they'll see your general location, but the app puts them on the map in a random location, somewhere within quite a large square area. When you write a letter to someone, it will take time to arrive, and the length of time will be directly related to how far they are from you.
In your profile and settings, you can decide whether to let others add you via auto-matching (computer matches you based on an interest and you can send out a generic letter), manual exploration (you will actually select some criteria and look through possible folks to write to), or require that any Friend Request be approved prior to it going through. When a person adds you as a friend, it just basically means they've sent their first intro letter.
I have found that most people are quite interested in making friends, learning about other countries and cultures, and want to practice English.
Have fun!

App Store Link

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slowly-connect-to-the-world/id1199811908

Developer's Website

https://www.slowly.app

Recommendations

2 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Tiffany J. Kim 2 years 7 months ago

Options

Comments

By The Tetris monster on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 16:45

Hi. This is great, I’ve been wanting something like this for a very long time. However, I am having some trouble with the auto match page.

I’m trying to set my target but clicking on options does not seem to present me with the result that I want. For example, if I want to set my age range to 25 to 30, it will for some reason set my age to 25 to 60. If I want to set a specific gender, clicking on female will present me with mail or non-binary and clicking on mail will present me with any. Does someone know how to deal with this? Also, has anyone contacted developers about accessibility improvements?

By The Tetris monster on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 16:45

I contacted the developers and pointed them to this thread. They gave me the usual response, thanks for your feedback, we’ve sent the comments to our development team and we hope to fix these issues in future updates et cetera. Let’s wait and see if anything comes from this.

By Tiffany J. Kim on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 16:45

Hi, sorry for my delayed response. With regards to the automatch page, all of the categories are selected by default, so when you are in the gender section, for example, when you tap on female, you are actually then de-selecting female as an option. I am still trying to figure out the age aspect, because that seems a bit more complicated. It seems that deselecting an age will end up deselecting everything below that number, though at other times, it seems to work in the opposite way, so I am still fiddling with it to see how best to use that. I have been meaning to contact the developers, but have not yet done so. Part of that is related to me not being versed on the lingo of app development to feel that I would be able to provide the guidance they would need to make this work with VoiceOver. Still, I have had some success with other apps, despite my lack of programming knowledge, so I will work on writing to them sometime in the next week or so.

By The Tetris monster on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 16:45

Thanks. I think I’m going to have to get sighted assistance at some point, at least that way I can get someone to help me set everything. As mentioned previously I did contact them, but I got the usual thanks for your feedback and we have forwarded it to the team response.

By Saj on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 16:45

I’m actually struggling trying to send a message I can compose the message to the person trying to find the send button for me it doesn’t work. Anyone got any suggestions?
Cheers

By SilverMoon on Tuesday, July 5, 2022 - 16:45

Hey @saj, I had issues with this too. So the way I ended up doing it, which honestly I only did it once, is go to the top of the screen, swipe right twice. Voice over doesn't read anything, but if you double tap there, it seems to work? It'll pop up a window, asking you to confirm sending, and you just click confirm. Again, I only did this once however, so if it doesn't work, please don't kill me.
Anyone have any tips on scanning the qr code? I have never been good at aiming my camera at things.
That, or is there another way to access the website version of this app? is it anymore accessible than the app?
Thank you so much!!!
P.s, any way of knowing how long it will take for a letter sent to you to arrive/ I have a thing on my home screen that says two new letters are arriving or something like that. But when I click on it, it doesn't show me the letters, and then it doesn't tell me how long it'll take to arrive. Only that they will arrive.

By SilverMoon on Tuesday, July 5, 2022 - 16:45

Hello, so my above questions still apply. I'm still wondering. I just thought of one more. So in my recently received, there's a whole list of letters I've already received and replied to. how do I make them go away? I imagine otherwise, the list will get quite long, and I won't be able to see how many letters are still on the way.
Hoping someone will reply soon!!!

By Bree on Monday, September 5, 2022 - 16:45

Have the developers made this more accessible? I would love to use this, but I have no sighted assistance for choosing an avatar and don't wanna end up looking like a man lol.

By Saj on Monday, September 5, 2022 - 16:45

Sorry I know this will not be very constructive but I took the app off as VoiceOver would just not work with it and it would not read out much so I’m just wondering if the editor or contributor for this app could change the information to not usable. Obviously if things have changed then that’s fair enough but it was not terribly accessible for me.

By Jennifer Kent on Saturday, November 2, 2024 - 08:45

The devs are looking at this thread. they are paying attention. They have assured me accessibility fixes are coming. Jane emailed me yesterday to assure me. In fact I did not even wait 24 hours on a response. I linked them up here. and they got back to me right away. so they are indeed hopefully going to have luck with that. I noticed with the latest IOS update screen recognition likes to vanish. and I cant get the rotor to stay where i want it. so there are some things that have changed or bugs. in vo. i hope they either go back to the old way or fix.