Your First Week on Qerios: A Getting-Started Guide

Joining a new app can feel like walking into a party where everyone already knows each other. The good news is that Qerios is simple at its core: people ask you questions, you decide which ones to answer, and you can ask others in return. This guide walks you through a calm, practical first week so you can enjoy it from day one and feel in control of your space.

You don't need to do everything at once. Treat the days below as suggestions and move at your own pace.

Day 1: Set up your profile

Your profile is how people see you, so spend ten minutes on it. From Settings, open Profile, where you can change:

• Display name. This is your public name. It doesn't have to be your real name.
• Username. This is your unique handle and the end of your Ask link. The app tells you if a username is available, and you can change it once a week, so pick something you'll be happy with.
• Bio. A sentence or two about you. You can mention other users, add hashtags and include links.
• Avatar. Upload a photo or build an avatar. If you prefer to keep your face off the internet, an avatar is a perfectly good option.
• Social handles. Optional. You add usernames only, and Qerios generates the profile links for you.

A useful rule: only share what you'd be comfortable with any visitor seeing. Your profile is public, so think about whether your bio contains details like your school, neighborhood or phone number. If it does, consider removing them.

You can also set your interests, which personalizes your feed and your matches.

Day 2: Get your Ask link out there

Your Ask link is your personal page where anyone can send you a question, including anonymous ones. When your inbox is empty, Qerios shows you the link with a button to copy it, and suggests pasting it in your Instagram bio or story.

A few tips:

• Share it where your friends already are. A story or a bio link is enough to get started.
• Add a line of context. "Ask me anything, I'll answer the fun ones" sets a friendly tone.
• Be ready for anonymity. Anonymous questions can be honest and fun, and sometimes awkward. You are never obliged to answer one.
• Check your Ask link settings. In Settings, the Ask Me Link section has analytics and visibility controls.

When you're ready for a gentle start, send yourself a few easy questions or ask a friend to send one, so your first experience is a positive one. For ideas on getting better questions, read how to get more honest questions on your Ask link, and if you are curious how it compares with apps like Saraha (صراحة) and NGL, see how to choose an anonymous questions app.

Day 3: Post your first answers

Questions land in your inbox. For each one you can answer, decline it, or leave it for later. Answering is more than typing text:

• Write a short answer. One honest sentence is better than a paragraph you don't mean.
• Attach a sketch. Draw something on the built-in canvas or pick one from your gallery.
• Add a song. Search for a track or paste a Spotify or Anghami link.

Answer the questions you enjoy, not the ones you feel you have to. Quality beats quantity, and people can tell the difference. Not sure how to write an answer? How to write answers people want to read has practical tips, and answering with a sketch is a fun place to start.

Day 4: Learn the safety tools

Most people have a great time. A few have a bad moment. It's much easier to handle one if you already know where the tools are.

• Decline. You can decline any question you don't want to answer. Nothing is wrong with that.
• Block. Blocking someone stops them from sending you questions or seeing your content. You can block a sender even when their question was anonymous, and you manage your blocked list in Settings under Blocked and Muted.
• Mute. Muting hides someone's content from your feed without them being blocked. You can unmute at any time.
• Report. If something is harassment, hate, threats, sexual content or spam, report it so the team can review it. Reporting helps protect other people too.
• Safety and filters. In Settings, Safety and Filters lets you set banned words. Qerios can also block a message that matches your banned words or one it identifies as harmful, and tell you it protected you.

If you are ever in doubt about whether to report or block, you can do both. For a deeper explanation of how the two differ, see our article on blocking versus reporting. Our guides to blocking versus reporting and what to do when you get a hurtful anonymous question explain each tool in detail.

Day 5: Try messages and random chat carefully

Once you're comfortable, you can explore more.

• Private chats. To message someone, you send a chat request, and the other person has to accept before you can talk. Inside a chat you can send photos, voice messages, sketches and music, and react to messages.
• Random chat. You are matched anonymously with someone new. Identities are shown only if both people agree to reveal. You can end the chat at any time, and you can report it from inside the chat.

For random chat, keep it simple: don't share personal details with a stranger, don't move to other apps too fast, and leave any conversation that feels off. There's no politeness cost to ending it. Before you start, read how anonymous random chat works and try games that break the ice.

Day 6: Review your notification and privacy settings

By now you know what the app feels like, so tune it. Notifications can be set for likes, replies and new questions, and you can turn the sound on or off. If you find yourself checking too often, switch off what you don't need.

Then review the basics of privacy:

• Your profile is public, so keep personal information out of it.
• Think before publishing sketches. You can save a sketch as private so only you see it.
• Don't share your password, and use a strong, unique one. Security settings let you manage your password and login sessions.
• Check who you've blocked or muted and adjust if you've changed your mind. If notifications start to feel like too much, take control of your notifications, and use the privacy settings checklist.

Day 7: Know your account options

Last, it helps to know you can step away whenever you want. In Settings under Danger Zone there are two choices.

• Deactivate your account. Your profile, questions and answers are hidden from everyone until you log in again. You can reactivate whenever you like. This suits a break.
• Delete your account. This requests permanent removal. Your account is hidden for 30 days, and if you don't log in during that time, your data is permanently deleted. Logging in within 30 days cancels the deletion. Qerios also has a page explaining deletion in detail, including what to do if you can't sign in.

Knowing the exits are there makes it easier to relax.

The difference between the two options is covered in deactivate vs delete account, and the full picture of the app is in What is Qerios?.

The takeaway

A good first week isn't about collecting as many questions as possible. It's about setting up a profile you're comfortable with, sharing your Ask link where your friends are, answering the questions you enjoy, knowing how to decline, block, mute and report, tuning your notifications, and remembering that you can deactivate or delete your account if you ever need to. Take it one day at a time, and make Qerios fit your life rather than the other way around.

When you are ready for more, read how to grow your profile on Qerios.