StoryBaze Chats Bring Story Cards, Highlights, Animated Emoji and Richer Whispers

Product update · v1.45.1

StoryBaze Chats gives readers and creators a dedicated place to continue the conversation. The update also brings linked Story Cards to Whispers, private Story Highlights and quote sharing, animated emoji reactions, and gifts on app and web Whispers. Together, these features connect a conversation to the story and passage that inspired it.

StoryBaze Chats: keep the conversation close to the story

Chats now has its own place in the home screen. The inbox brings recent one-to-one conversations together with message previews, unread state and presence indicators. A separate Requests view keeps a first message from a new contact apart from accepted conversations. The recipient can open the request, review its message, then accept or decline; the composer stays unavailable until acceptance.

In an accepted chat, people can send text and photos, group several photos into an album, reply to a specific message, and use emoji reactions. They can edit their own messages and choose whether to delete a message for themselves or for everyone. Chat settings cover notification and presence choices, including online and last-seen visibility. Chat conversations sync through StoryBaze and are not end-to-end encrypted.

The goal is a focused conversation flow that gives a person room to decide who can reach them and how visible their activity should be. It also keeps the first step familiar: find a person, open Chats, and continue from there.

Animated emoji, using the same assets as the app

Animated emoji are part of the conversation itself, not a separate sticker pack or custom animation drawn just for this release. StoryBaze bundles TGS files, decompresses the Lottie documents locally, and plays them through the existing chat renderer. The same asset catalog powers animated examples in the picker and emoji reactions in message threads.

The 20 examples below use the bundled animation assets across reactions, expressions, gestures, nature, imagination and celebration. They loop automatically, and the preview respects reduced-motion settings.

The project’s bundled asset notice identifies the animation collection source and format. StoryBaze does not redraw the original artwork or claim authorship of those assets.

Story Highlights: keep the lines that stay with you

Reading is often a conversation with yourself. Story Highlights lets a reader select a passage and save it for later. They can add a private thought, revisit or remove a saved passage, create a visual quote card, or share the selected passage to a Whisper. Private thoughts remain private; sharing a passage is a separate action. Highlights and passage selection work in both scroll reading and book reading.

The feature is for the sentences people want to remember, discuss, or use as a path back into a chapter.

Figure 1. Original feature artwork for Story Highlights and shareable Whispers. The interface is illustrative, not a screenshot of a specific account.

Story Cards in Whispers: keep the story attached

When composing a Whisper, a reader can mention a person or story and attach a linked Story Card for a story chapter. The card carries the story cover, title, author and chapter context into the Whisper. In the composer it can be reviewed or removed; on a published Whisper it remains tappable and opens the linked chapter.

Readers can also carry a selected passage into the Whisper composer from either reading mode. The quote and its story context stay together, so a shared thought gives people a clear route back to the chapter. The Whisper editor supports rich-text formatting and searchable people and story mentions, which remain formatted when the Whisper is viewed.

A Whisper can travel further

A published Whisper now has a richer shared web page. Visitors can read it, like it, share its link, and reply without signing up. Web replies appear as Anonymous to the Whisper owner; StoryBaze still processes the information needed to operate the service and moderate abuse. Replies from signed-in members retain their profile attribution in the app.

Replies are private to the Whisper owner by default. The owner can review, moderate, or remove them and choose whether approved replies also appear on the shared page. Signed-in members can send a Whisper coin gift in the app using coins from their balance. Visitors on the public web Whisper page can also send a gift through checkout; the server verifies payment before crediting the recipient. Approved Authors and Creators receive eligible gift value as creator earnings under the applicable payout rules; other recipients receive spendable coins that are not withdrawable.

Whisper playback also follows the feed: clips pause and resume as the viewer moves between items, and playback is cleaned up when the screen or navigation state changes.

That makes a Whisper a small public conversation page: a visitor can respond, react, share the link, or support the person who posted it, while the owner retains control over public replies.

Find people and choose a creative path

The Find Friends screen gathers search, QR codes, invites, nearby discovery and contact matching in one place. Suggested accounts continue as a person scrolls. Facebook matching is limited to mutual users who also use StoryBaze and authorize the app; it does not expose a member’s full Facebook friends list and depends on Meta granting the required permission.

The Author and Creator paths describe different kinds of work. Authors apply to publish written stories. Creators apply to publish eligible SBits video work. People can switch their selected path in Settings as their creative work changes. Approval and access remain subject to StoryBaze review, and monetization follows the applicable agreement and policy.

Figure 2. Original artwork illustrating the written-story and SBits video paths; it does not represent an in-app account or promise approval.

SBits: a more connected creation flow

The release also connects more of the SBits creation workflow. Creators can enter through Create or Upload, choose a clip or set up a generation, and carry editing choices through the editor hand-off into publishing. Caption and audio settings, publishing details and save-to-device are part of that flow. Some visual effects are applied during export rather than previewed live in the editor.

Open Chats. Keep the line that matters. Pass the story on.