There is an achievement for sending a letter to your birthday twin but how can I find mine in Slowly? Is there some way to search or just by looking at people's bio? I've tried this but couldn't find mine so far. Is it possible for people to share their birthday under this post and find each other's birthday twin?

Hi, I am new to slowly, I was able to connect pretty well with someone who is intermediate 3/5 in english from Canada. However the first two that message me at Beginner 2/5, I find it really hard to connect and messages are kinda short and I try my best to be thoughtful. I am assuming they are trying to learn english even though they don't really specify it? I don't know how to go about it.

hi im just wondering if the other user get notified when i save the pictures they sent? i simply wanted to do a reverse search to the pic, to really be sure that it is from them and not from the pinterest 😅.

I've just started using this app. At the start I wasn't really sure what I was doing after I sent out my first (awful) letter.

So I looked at the profiles on the suggestions page. Found one person with a long about me, about stop harassing her etc, giving examples and how she sent a photo to one person and they didn't believe it was her. It gave me a good laugh even though it wasn't meant to be funny, it was just the way it was written. So messaged her saying that and sorry to hear you were going through all that. Was I naive in doing that?

I later got a reply back going on about the harassment, and that she mentioned she used to work in the UK (where I live) and she gave me her UK whatsapp number. Why would someone give me their number on their very first message? Also it's missing one digit so I can't add her anyways. It just all feels very sus.

This is the first time I've ever used an app to make friends so I have no idea what I am expecting. Just being very cautious. I don't even want to add her to Whatsapp as she could then use my number.

Any thoughts?

I've been having this problem for a while, but whenever I log out of my account on slowly, it doesn't let me in again. When I try to log in with my email, it just says "no account can be found" even though I verified that my account is connected to that email. I can enter the app just fine from my phone but I can't access it from any other devices. Is there a way to solve this?

Question regarding this achievement.

When these new achievements were introduced, i got all other stamps immediately when they were introduced, but I didn't get this one, although people did respond to my opened letter before.

Some sort of bug, or do i need a new open letter?

Don't know if this is right flair, couldn't find any better

I've been using slowly on and off for years. I think what tends to disappoint me (and result in off periods) is that I write personalised letters and put substantial effort into making them interesting and unique to the user I am making first contact with.

But as I come from Australia, it takes 1-2+ days for my letters to reach most destinations. It really appears that the majority of users do not have the patience to wait ~2-4 days for a correspondence cycle. I've always found European cultures fascinating and so I tend to try begin corresponding with Europeans. But often letters are just left on read.

I'm honestly just ranting my disappointment at the above perception I have developed. I'm starting to find a lot of 'Slowly Stories' have romantic undertones which further makes me believe people only want to talk to people nearby because - in truth they're actually really hoping to begin a romantic relationship, that isn't long distance, or unrealistically long distance (i.e. within the same continent).

Is there any way the dev team could start to move away from these stories that give the impression Slowly is a quasi-dating app? or would this hurt the bottom line?

Is there any way the dev team could incentivise sending letters abroad instead of within a 2 hour radius? or disincentives repeatedly beginning correspondences within the same radius.

Currently it feels remote locations are punished simply for being that: remote.

Couldn't fit all of this months stamps

...not even in the two topics I regularly have to create as we can only have a max 20 images per post. (Our main December 2024 releases post is HERE)

One new International Day stamp

Invention of Radio

And 11 Happy Hour Premium stamps added also

Australian Negroni, AU

Cesar, Canada

Arak, Indonesia

Aperol Spritz, Italy

Sochu Highball, Japan

Somaek, South Korea

Macuá, Nicaragua

Szarlotka, Poland

Raki, Turkey

Pho Cocktail, Vietnam

Amarula Don Pedro, South Africa

New Location stamps at last!!

Slowly team seems to have changed tack, as it had been a VERY long time since we had a new Location stamp issue. These are FREE for local users or visitors to the countries, and can also be purchased via the World Explorer random purchase feature, at 25 Coins per try (similar to the Time Machine).

This time, China, Indonesia, Turkey and the USA got new stamps.

China 1

Canon Tower at Slowly WIKI

China 2

May Fourth Square at Slowly WIKI

China 3

Classical Gardens of Suzhou at Slowly WIKI

China 4

Shaolin Temple at Slowly WIKI

India got 3 new stamps:

Ajanta Caves, India

Ajanta Caves

Howrah Bridge, India

Howrah Bridge at Stamps Wiki

Mahabodhi Temple, India

Mahabodhi Temple at Stamps Wiki

Indonesian stamps :

Indonesia 1

Borobudur Temple at Stamps Wiki

Indonesia 2

Grand Mosque of Medan at Stamps Wiki

Indonesia 3

Surabaya Monument at Stamps Wiki

Indonesia 4

Tangkuban Perahu at Stamps Wiki

And these are the Turkey issues:

Turkey 1

Anitkabir at Stamps Wiki

Turkey 2

Hadrian's Gate at Stamps Wiki

Turkey 3

Hagya Sophia Mosque at Stamps Wiki

Turkey 4

Izmir Clock Tower at Stamps Wiki

Finally, Trumplandia also got some:

U.S. 1

The Alamo at Stamps Wiki

U.S. 2

Hollywood sign at Stamps Wiki

U.S. 3

Kennedy Space Center at Stamps Wiki

I will be adding more details later, as I need to add all of these to our Wiki - where detailed World Explorer pages for each will tell all about each.

Total Stamp Counts, top 20 Countries

Massive presence of Southeast Asian nations as we have seen in the past, but many other countries got a boost also.

Top 20 Countries by stamp counts

.

Another BIG batch arriving for November 2024.

49 in total - Too many to show in a single Reddit topic post, as it only allows 20 images maximum per topic.

The huge amount of new stamps make posting a release quite a complicated task. But bear with me, this month we need 3 topics to cover them all.

Listing by Category so it's easier to grasp...

18 NEW Location stamps

For many months, I had a note in my monthly releases posts:

Sadly, again, this batch does not include any new Location ones. 🙄😕

But, surprisingly, this time we have a BIG batch of new Location stamps. This hasn't happenned in a LONG time, and it appears to me these might be the first of a new focused effort in this area from Slowly HQ - kudos to them! Thank you!

These are on a separate post here as I cannot add more images to this post.

3 new Commemorative Global Releases

Time limited, and available for Free only in their designated countries. Most likely these will appear later on the Time Machine for the regular 25 Coins random purchase.

Christmas 2024 is really lovely!

Happy New Year 2025

Happy Birthday 2025 also has a Gator theme

2 new Regional commemoratives

Bulgaria

Sled Ride, Poland

** Availability of these stamps is still UNCERTAIN

11 more Happy Hour premium stamps

Premium at 50 Coins each. 🎁

These are on a separate post here as I cannot add more images to this post.

And 1 more Sounds of the World premium stamps

Premium at 50 Coins each. 🎁

Ramkie Guitar, South Africa

** New Timeless Tales series appeared **

With 13 stamps to start. Premium at 50 Coins each. 🎁

Tales 1

Tales 2

Tales 3

Tales 4

Tales 5

Tales 6

Tales 7

Tales 8

Tales 9

Tales 10

Tales 11

Tales 12

Tales 13

All of those stamps will be added to our WIKI

...which is a great reference tool for anyone curious about the many Slowly stamps.

We have extra pages for each of these new commemoratives. Many thanks to u/EducationalAd_1575 for volunteering and assisting in creating these. 😎🌟😊

Tentative December 2024 Stamp Releases and Dates ?

Subject to errors, as for the most part we have to research and find the dates ourselves. I have not verified any of these dates, but think this can be useful and appreciated, right.

Complete monthly release schedule. Re-issues are NOT shown this time. Many thanks to our friends who produced these in the past, and in the future. 😎

So there are people who reply my open letter without said their names, age or just present themselves. Is normal?

I wanted to upgrade to Plus. I was wondering if there will be discounts for Black Friday.

I just got a reply from someone who I enjoyed talking to - their letter contained "[insert your dream destination here]." When talking about travelling. I'm sad people use ChatGPT for this and it makes me not want to reply to the person anymore even though I thought we had a good vibe.... Just needed to vent

I've been using Slowly for a year and a half, and like many of you, I’ve experienced ghosting or situations where penpals stopped replying altogether—even after waiting more than six months.

That being said, I’ve also had some meaningful and effortless exchanges with penpals whose communication style aligned with mine, or who made an effort to update their bio with little notes like: catching up on letters, taking a break, etc. This transparency helped me feel more connected and patient.

Unfortunately, the majority of my penpals didn’t communicate this way. Some left my follow-up letters on read, others stopped replying after a couple of exchanges, and in some cases, I noticed I had been removed from their list. To avoid doing the same to others, I made it a point to send a farewell letter if I didn’t feel a connection or didn't know about them for a while, before removing someone.

So, for those of you who have used Slowly for a long time and haven’t left, what advice would you give on how to use the app more effectively? Specifically, how do you:

☀️Select better penpals to avoid potential ghosting or mismatched connections?

☀️Respect your own emotional boundaries while still respecting others’ time and circumstances?

☀️Deal with the fear of falling into the same patterns (ghosting, removal, etc.) again?

I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts or strategies cause I have used other penpal apps a few years ago and was unsuccessfull as well and I like the concept of this app but after a while the uncertainty mixed with frequent being ghosted despite efforts to connect and communicate well (...) doesn't help in the long run to also want to stay there.

Thanks in advance!

Hey peeps,

Is the app still running? I used to be on the app for the past two years however i stopped getting letters and got ghosted by many people multiple times. However i thought it might be a one time thing and i might get new letters one day. But even after 6 months i haven’t received any new ones i tried writing few myself but either i didn’t get reply or got a few blunt lines as reply 😅 how is it for you guys? You getting any friends??

Hello everybody. So in December 30 of last year I had a girlfriend of 5 years basically abandon me in the middle of the night. After a few weeks I rejoined Slowly just because I was incredibly lonely and needed people to talk to. My intentions on Slowly are never to find a relationship, it's not how I think of the app. I met a few people and we talked and general the conversations fizzled out. In March of this year I met a woman. I told her multiple times I wasn't looking for a relationship right now and I wasn't ready, I was so hurt from my last breakup I was thinking I'd never love again...im.dramatic. We exchanged messages, and eventually photos and audios for about two months and in June she invited me to WhatsApp. She had became rather flirtatious on Slowly and I admit that I liked the attention. I accepted her invitation and joined the app.

Within five minutes in the app this person told me she loved me, and from there the beginning of one of the most insane and stupid relationships I have ever been in began. There were so many signs that she was obviously.a bad person throughout the relationship. I will say now throughout our six month relationship I never sent any money or gave personal information or access to other social medias, and only gave her an email that is like my third string, as I am a highly suspicious person. That being said I ignored all of the signs(repeating my wanting me to open a pay pal account for her to send money, asking me repeatedly early on Slowly if I needed an international job and saying she clukd get me one, disappearing for days on end after taking away my access on WhatsApp to see her profile pic or anything she was doing. I feel she has multiple people she dangles along at once trying to see what possible uses they have for her and then drops them when she is done and threatens to blackmail and send photos and so forth to people even though I feel she has no access or knowledge if who to even send them to. I honestly don't really care if she does and I told her that.

A few weeks ago we argued and I finally went off on her and called her out on everything. I hadn't prior to this as I had fooled myself into thinking I would try to fix her, that she really loved me and she was just a narcissist because of her tough life ect...but with all of the signs showing she is pretty much a scammer that I deliberately ignored and chose not to dwell on...I realize now that anything real was never a part of anything on her side.

About two weeks ago I ran into a new account of hers on Slowly. I have remained on there and continued to talk with people, normally as I prefer. This was before our final breakup but during a short breakup a few days before, and my l oname butt just sent her a message telling her to get back with me. Today I logged in and reported her profile but since we don't have any letters between us I'm sure I'll just look like I'm a fraud.

Is there anything I should do to try and let Slowly know maybe to monitor her or something so she doesn't stay on her path, I also would like to know if there is anyway I could disallow her entire country from searching for me as I want no contact with her whatsoever as ehmmshe is a bad, heartless person

Thank you to anyone for taking the time and I hope all is well. Slowly is such an amazing place and I feel so dumb for the crap I put up with but I'm happy I didn't lose anything but time and my love.

hello strangers

I installed the app around half a year now Because am into writing, expression, conversations and so on. I have published an open letter once before but i ended up deleting it cuz it seemed like didn’t reached out to anyone at all, it was good and decent letter so my question is , how was your experience with an open letter ? did you made it reach out and got responses ? if so how ? and how to have an effective reach out , cuz i do like writing regularly and would love to meet people like-minded

Thank you in advance!

I have been using this app for over two years. Many people here are just passersby, and only a few have stayed in touch with me.

The reason I use this app is simply to do language exchange and make friends from other countries. I don't mean to find any potential partner.

Six months ago, I decided to turn off the auto-matching feature and started writing letters in English to people around the world. Every letter I sent was written by me personally, without relying on AI assistance.

Around that time, I received two sincere replies—one from Norway and the other from Spain. Coincidentally, both were from men.

The Norwegian penpal visited my country as a tourist but didn’t arrange to meet me. Instead, he continued writing letters as usual.

As for the Spanish penpal, he confessed in one of his letters that he had fallen for me. His letters were always long and heartfelt. He even purchased a one-year premium membership just to record a lengthy voice message for me. For over five months, we exchanged letters and got to know each other through long video calls. He knows he’s not very good-looking, but he still mustered the courage to video call me, and I admire his bravery and honesty. I was touched by his sincerity and found myself falling for him as well. However, the harsh reality is that we live over 10,000 kilometers apart. We couldn’t even exchange handwritten letters. With a heavy heart, I told him, “It’s unlikely we can have a successful relationship.” He told me he still liked me, but after that, he stopped responding altogether. When faced with separation, he didn’t resort to any emotional manipulation; he simply said he respected my decision.

Now, I’ve lost a penpal who had accompanied me for nearly half a year. I miss his laughter, his Spanish accent, and all the happy moments he gave me. I’ve saved his letters and voice messages as keepsakes.

In this era full of scams, meeting a sincere person is truly rare. I feel incredibly sad.😭

Anyone here who successfully found their partner in this app and got married. How to spot those serious ones? And also those who like for fun and hookups only?

I kept daily/weekly contact with these two different boys (A and B) from the UK for almost a year until last November, 2023. I got a letter from A in Nov and for the longest time didn't open it because I was worried he'd see I opened it and didn't reply right away, because life was so busy to respond so I opened it about a week later so he knew I read it. B also sent a letter which I opened and didn't respond to because of the busyness. A couple weeks go by and A sends a follow up letter asking me thoughts on a book he told me about which I bought to read and didn't have time to finish it so I told myself I'll respond when I do finish it. B also sends a follow up asking how I'm doing, which I didn't open because I didn't have time to respond to. A month goes by, Dec/Jan and OMG, I STILL haven't responded because I honestly forgot all about the app, but I told myself it's too late! Now every month I think about those two, but keep telling myself it's too rude and too late to not respond the later I go without contact and when I do they will deserve a full blown apology, but now it's one year later and I'm scared they'll be so mad that there's not a point in responding. I feel like I've completely ruined two great friendships. I haven't even opened the app since I read their letters.

How would you react to a penpal who didn't respond until a YEAR later?

.

Wouldn't it be great if we could create Postcards

...at some point -- to send to our pen pal friends?

The postcards would allow for brief messages, without annoying the recipient (who might be expecting a long letter, possibly). This would be faster than composing a full letter, and done in short order when inspiration came. While travelling, for example?

It would also allow us to send a great image, relevant for the moment. Special occasions, Birthdays, Holiday greetings, I can see this feature serving in many instances, and being enjoyed by many. So here are the details...

(originally posted on our subReddit here, on July 26, 2020 - and now out for the wider world to consider)

A new idea, explained

I had this idea yesterday -- and made a comment about it in one of the Topics on our subReddit here. Problem is, I can't find it, so here it goes. For discussion, comments and possibly being passed on to the Slowly Team for consideration.

• New feature -- Slowly allowing a user-created Postcard.
• Two sided as a typical postcard. Side one being a full size photo or image selected by the user.
• Side two would have the typical postcard layout as well : A stamp (to be user selected).
• An address area, which could be narrower than shown in the sample above; and would be pre-filled with the destination pen pal's username, city and country.
• And a message area -- which is limited in size and so can accept only a certain amount of text. A good and valid reason to send someone something short of a full letter size! :)
• Would be a pretty neat way to quickly share some cool stamps with friends as well.

I think this could be an interesting added feature. I would take some work from the programming team, but could be implemented without rushing them, if there's interest.

Longer term, maybe we could even create a depository of images, where anyone interested could place local postcard images (non-copyrighted, their own photos for example) and these could be seen and reused by anyone interested.

Great image sources abound

We could even use Vintage postcard designs which might now be in the Public Domain, their copyright having expired. The Boston Public Library hosts a nice collection there. As does the Museums Victoria, from Australia.

Or look at the beautiful photos available on sites like Unsplash.com, which are free for use in most cases.

Archive.org also has lots of interesting images on file. For example, see their Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection here (now hosting 141,061 images).

A sample gallery, collected from Unsplash:

.

" Vintage postcard, Boston Public Library "

.

" Vintage photo, Museums Victoria "

.

" Photo by Tetiana SHYSHKINA "

.

" Photo by Les Anderson "

.

" Photo by Dariusz Sankowski "

...[ more content, online ]...

And the post continues, with more images and details.

See it on the New Blog page version here.

Also Crossposted on TWITTER with SlowlyApp attribution.

EDIT :

Although this idea is worthy, and has been supported by many Slowly users, so far we haven't got it. This post is a copy of the original, posted in November 2021, so 3 years ago. 😕🙄

How long is the length of your letter if you have been writing letter to a person for a month?

I love receiving long thought out letters and I try my best to send out the same, but lately I've been getting ones that are just... phrased oddly? Every paragraph opens and ends with the same tone, adjectives where there's no need for them, detailed recapping of my own letter, etc.

It makes me sad to think I'm having a conversation with someones who doesn't put the same effort in. Has anyone else noticed this? Are there any telltale signs of AI writing I'm not aware of?