The AIM buddy list, without the messenger.
A narrow window that sits in the corner of your screen and shows which of your friends are at their computers right now. Each person is here, away, or offline. They can leave a clever away message, or a here message saying what they’re up to at the computer right this minute, in a color and a font they picked.
That’s the whole thing. Names and sentences.
why
You used to be able to tell at a glance who was around. Not who posted, not who was “active 14m ago.” Who was actually sitting at a computer, right then, possibly bored, possibly up for something. A window in the corner, a column of names, and a small sound when somebody showed up.
That worked because being online was an event. Now everyone is online every minute of every day, so presence software had to find something else to report, and what it found was you: last-seen stamps, typing indicators, read receipts, little green dots that mean nothing because they never go out. Same idea, opposite feeling.
Hereandaway is the good version, rebuilt. Getting it back mostly meant taking things out.
the sound
Someone shows up, you hear it. Someone leaves, you hear a quieter version of it. If you had a buddy list in 2001 you already know exactly what this is for.
Per person you can turn it off, leave it on, or promote someone so they still cut through when everything else is muted.
what it doesn’t do
No chat. No history. No last-seen, no “active 14m ago,” no typing indicators, no read receipts, no sorting by who was around recently. No now-playing, no location. No search, no directory, no strangers: the only way onto your list is a single-use invite code somebody hands you themselves. No analytics and no telemetry, in the app or on this page, and no checking in when you open it: the app tells you an update exists only because you were already connected, never because it went looking.
Presence lives in the server’s memory and is never written down, so there is no record of who was online when. Not for you, not for us, not for anyone who asks us. If you want that spelled out, the privacy page is the long version. It’s short too.
get it
Desktop only, on purpose. The whole signal is “at a computer,” and a phone is always at a person.
It isn’t available to download right now.