Apps like Omegle in 2026, and what actually replaced it
Omegle closed in 2023 and nothing took its place cleanly. Here is what people use instead in 2026, what each one is good and bad at, and what to avoid.
Omegle shut down in November 2023. Its founder left a long goodbye letter on the front page, the servers went dark, and about fourteen years of "talk to strangers" went with them. Three years later people are still typing apps like Omegle into Google every day, which tells you something: the thing they wanted did not disappear with the website.
I build a chat app, so I have an obvious interest here. I am going to be straight with you anyway, because a list that only says "use mine" is worth nothing and you would spot it in ten seconds. Some of what people replaced Omegle with is fine. Some of it is worse than what it replaced. And one whole category of it I would not put on my own phone.
First, be honest about what you actually miss
"Apps like Omegle" is four different wishes wearing one coat:
1. You want to talk to someone new, right now, without adding them to anything. No friend request, no profile, no follow-back. 2. You want a room with people in it — the old chat room feeling, where a conversation is already happening and you can sit in it before you say anything. 3. You want to practise a language with somebody who actually speaks it. 4. You want the camera-roulette thing: random video, next, next, next.
They are not the same wish and they do not have the same answer. The fourth one is where almost all of the trouble lives, and I will get to that.
Where people went
Discord is where the biggest share went, and for good reason: it is free, it works everywhere, and communities are real there. But Discord is not a stranger app. It is built around servers you are invited to, and the good ones have rules, roles and people who have known each other for years. Walking into a large public server cold is not the same as being paired with one person who wanted to talk; you are a name in a list of four thousand. If you want a community, Discord is excellent. If you want a conversation tonight, it is a strange fit.
Random video apps — the ones that pair you with a camera on the other side — are the closest literal replacement, and they are the ones I would be most careful with. Two problems follow them everywhere. The first is exposure: your face, your room, your background, being screenshotted by someone you will never identify. The second is who else is on there. Omegle's own closure came after years of legal pressure about exactly that, and the apps that inherited its traffic inherited the problem without inheriting any obligation to fix it.
Reddit, forums and Twitch chat catch a lot of the rest. They work, in a slow way. You are talking to a thread rather than a person, and nothing happens in real time unless you get lucky.
Language exchange apps are the answer to wish number three, and they are genuinely good at it. Most of them are also matching systems — you fill in a profile, you get suggested partners, you start a text thread. If you want the room, you will still be missing the room.
What to look for, whichever one you choose
After a year of building moderation tools I care about four things, in this order.
Is there any cost to being a bad person? On an app where a banned account is replaced in eleven seconds by a new one, the ban means nothing and the moderation policy is theatre. Ask what stops the same person coming back. If the answer is "an email address", the answer is nothing.
Is there anyone on the other end of a report? Automatic filters catch slurs and links. They do not catch the thing that actually drives people off an app, which is one persistent person being awful in a way no keyword list has ever described. A report has to reach a human who can end it.
Can you leave without leaving a trail? Check what a deleted account actually deletes. Most apps' answers are on a page nobody reads until it matters — ours is here, and it says exactly what goes and what stays.
Does it work in your language? This is the one people forget. Half the reason strangers stop talking to each other is not hostility, it is that the conversation gets tiring in a second language after ten minutes.
Where Hashti fits, honestly
I built Hashti for the second wish: rooms with people in them, the way chat rooms worked before everything became a feed. It is on the App Store now, it is free, and it is 18+.
Three things about it are different from the Omegle lineage, and all three are deliberate.
One person, one account. An identity check ties an account to a real government document. The document itself is deleted the moment it is checked; the fingerprint of it stays, so the same document cannot quietly open a second account. Twelve verified reports and the account is gone permanently — and because of the fingerprint, it stays gone. That is the whole point of the safety page, and it is the part random-video apps have never been able to do.
Rooms first — and, since today, strangers too. You see a list of rooms with names and topics, you walk into one, and there is already a conversation happening. Voice rooms work the same way: you can listen before you say anything. There is also a Strangers screen that does the one Omegle thing properly: it puts you with one other person nobody chose, with Next, Report and Block on the screen. It is words only — no camera, no microphone, no pictures, no links — and both sides passed the ID check before they reached the queue. Nothing of the conversation is kept once either of you leaves, unless somebody reports it.
Live translation. Every message can arrive in the language you read in, in 29 languages, with the original always one tap away. That is part of Hashti Plus ($4.99 a month or $39.99 a year); everything else in the app is free. More about how it works is on the translation page.
And what it is not: it is not a video-roulette app, it is not a dating app, and it is not anonymous in the sense of nobody knows who you are — the whole design is that somebody, once, checked you were a real adult.
The honest recommendation
- If you want a community you will still be in next year, use Discord and find a small server.
- If you want to practise a language, use a language-exchange app, or a chat app whose translation is good enough that you can speak in your own.
- If you want a room with people in it tonight, that is what Hashti is.
- If you want random video with strangers, I do not have a recommendation for you, and I would think hard about what you are handing over for ten minutes of company.
Omegle closing was not the end of talking to strangers. It was the end of doing it with nobody in charge of what happened next.
Hashti is free, and it is 18+. Hashti Plus — live translation, writing help and catch-ups — is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and nothing else costs anything. How rooms work is on the rooms page, and how reports and the ID check work is on the safety page.