The Hobby Network · Member Guide
Chat is now a real conversation — reply, react, pin, save, and see who's there. Here's everything it can do, on the website and in the app.
Open the Messages menu at the top of the site and choose Instant Messages. That's your Message Center — every conversation in one place.
Your Store Rooms sit at the top and your Direct Messages below. A green dot means that person is active right now, and a red number is how many messages you haven't read. ★ Saved and ⚙ Settings sit just above the list.
Store Rooms are group conversations hosted by a seller. If a seller you follow or have bought from has one, it shows up here — and when they go live, a Live now button appears right in the conversation.
Hover a message (or press and hold on your phone) and a small row of buttons appears. That's where everything lives.
😊 React with an emoji · ↩ Reply to quote that exact message · ☆ Save it privately · 📌 Pin it (room hosts) · ✎ Edit and 🗑 Delete your own.
😊↩☆📌✎🗑
Replies keep things straight. In a busy room, replying quotes the message you're answering so nobody has to guess which one you meant.
Two buttons sit at the start of the message box. 🖼 sends a picture and 📎 sends a file — so the scan, the invoice or the spreadsheet stays with the conversation it belongs to, instead of in an email nobody can find later.
Click 📎, choose your file, and it goes straight into the conversation — there's no second step to confirm. It arrives as a tidy card showing its name and size, and you can carry on typing as normal.
PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, plain text and ZIP — up to 10 MB each. Pictures go through the 🖼 button instead.
Anything else is politely turned away, and that includes the much older Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats. That's deliberate — it's what lets you open a file that lands in your chat without thinking twice about it. If yours is refused, re-save it in the newer format and send it again.
Sending a lot at once? Files go one at a time and there's a gentle limit on how fast, so if you're asked to wait a moment, wait a moment — nothing has gone wrong.
Click the card and the file saves to your computer. Only the people in that conversation can open it — passing the link to somebody else gets them nowhere, and if you leave the room the file goes with it.
In the app you can see every file arrive.
Downloading is on the website for now. The app shows you the file's name and size so you know it's there — open the website when you want to save it. Sending files is a website job too; pictures work in both.
Under your newest message you'll see Seen by and the name of whoever has read it. At the top of the conversation you'll see whether they're active now — and in a store room, how many people are active.
It updates the moment they read it. In a room with several people it counts them — Seen by 4 people.
This works both ways. If you turn off your own read receipts in Chat Settings, other people stop seeing when you've read theirs — and you stop seeing when they've read yours. Same for active status. It's always even.
If you host a store room, you can pin the messages people keep asking about — break times, shipping days, the rules. Everyone in the room can then jump straight to them.
Use 📌 on any message to pin it. A 📌 button with a number appears at the top of the room — anyone can open it and click a pinned message to jump right to it.
Pinning is for room hosts. In a one-to-one conversation there's nothing to pin — but saving works everywhere, and that's next.
An address, a price you agreed, a card you want to come back to. Press ☆ on any message and it goes to your Saved list. Nobody else can see what you save.
Everything you've starred, from every conversation, in one place. Click any of them to jump back to where it was said.
Saving is just for you. The other person is never told, and it never shows in the conversation — it's a private bookmark.
Type @ and start their name — a short list of the people in the conversation appears. Pick one and they get notified, and your message highlights their name.
On the website use the arrow keys and press Enter or Tab to pick. On your phone, just tap the name.
Open ⚙ Settings above your conversation list. Two switches, and both are even-handed — whatever you hide from others is also hidden from you.
Blocking still works the way you'd expect. If you've blocked someone, or they've blocked you, neither of you sees the other's activity, typing, or read receipts.
Everything above works on your phone too. Open the Messages tab — ★ and ⚙ are in the top corner, and you press and hold a message instead of hovering it.
★ opens Saved Messages, ⚙ opens Chat Settings.
Press and hold any message for these.