# Chat

> Threads with the people you share a workspace with or are connected to, including the household. Works offline like the rest of the app.

Chat is where the people in a workspace talk. A thread can hold everyone in
the workspace, one other person, or a few of you. Messages move the way
everything else in The Margin does: one typed on a train goes out when the
tunnel ends, and threads you have already opened read fine with no signal.

## Who can be in a thread

- **Workspace thread**: everyone in the workspace, household profiles included, so a child with no
  email appears under their nickname.
- **Direct thread**: you and one other person. Two people only ever have one of these between
  them, whoever started it.

- **Group thread**: a few people, with a name if you give it one.

You can add anyone in your workspace and anyone you are connected to, even if
you share no workspace with them. To message someone who is around right now,
press their face where The Margin shows who is here: the family list in the
sidebar, the Today card on the family page, the team's pulse, or the faces at
the top of a board you are both on. That opens
your direct thread with them, or starts it. Nobody else can be added. A thread that
could reach a stranger through a guessed email address would be a nuisance,
and the rest of the app refuses to be one of those too.

> **Note:** The wall display can show the family chat as a widget: the last few
> messages with faces, and a reply box. It replies as the account the screen is
> signed in to, or, for a household member with no login, as them once a
> grown-up confirms with their wall PIN. See
> [Wall widgets](https://themarginapp.com/docs/wall-widgets#money-and-chat-on-a-shared-screen).

## What you can do with a message

Press and hold a message on a phone, or hover over it on a laptop and press
the dots, and the same short menu opens, as a sheet on a phone and right
beside the message on a larger screen: react, **Reply** and **Copy text**, plus **Edit** and **Delete** on your own messages.
Delete asks for a second press, because it cannot be undone.

- **Reactions.** Six common emoji sit on the menu, and the plus button beside
  them opens the rest with a search box. Press one you already added to take it
  back. The count shows under the message, and tapping it shows who reacted.
- **Replies** quote the message they answer. Tap the quote to jump back to
  the original, which lights up for a moment so you can spot it.
- **Edits and deletes.** An edited message says so. A deleted one leaves a
  marker, so a reply to it still points somewhere, and its reactions go with
  it.
- **Links** can be tapped. Nothing else in a message is formatted: what you
  type is what everyone reads.
- **Link previews.** A message with exactly one link shows a small card with
  the page's title and picture, when Margin already has a preview of that
  address from a capture or a note. Sending a message never fetches one, so a
  link in chat does not tell the site anything. Two or more links stay plain.
  Turn previews off under **Link previews** in
  **Settings → Profile**.

On a laptop, Enter sends. On a phone keyboard, return starts a new line and
the send button sends, so a half-written message does not go out by accident.

The mic beside the send button, **Dictate a message**, puts
what you say into the box. You read it and send it yourself; nothing goes out
by voice alone. See [Voice](https://themarginapp.com/docs/voice).

In a direct thread, your latest message shows Seen once the other person has
read it.

While someone else in the thread is typing, a small quill writes above the
box with their name: "Sam is writing…". It goes a few seconds after they stop,
or as soon as their message lands, and you never see your own. What you type
is not sent until you press send; only the fact that you are typing reaches the
others, and nothing about it is kept. It needs a live connection and comes with
the plans that include live presence (Family and Team).

## Pictures

Sending pictures in chat is switched off for now, on the web and in the phone
app, so the composer has no paperclip. A picture already sent in a thread
still shows there and opens full size. To share a picture with your
household meanwhile, attach it to a note or a card.

## Everyone in the house

Every family workspace has one thread called **Everyone in the house**. It is
made with the workspace and pinned at the top of the list. Everyone in the
house is in it, kids' profiles too, and people join and leave it as they join
and leave the house, so nobody has to set it up. Before anyone has written in
it, it says who is in it, rather than sitting empty.

If you belong to more than one family, the house you have open is the one
pinned at the top. The others stay in your list, named for their house
("Everyone in The Riveras"), so you can tell them apart.

When a message names something on the shopping list ("got the lemons"), the
name becomes a link that opens that list with the item picked out.

## The thread list

Each row shows who the thread is with, their picture when they have one
(a household profile's portrait or emoji too), the last thing said, and when.
Today's threads show the time, yesterday's say Yesterday, older ones the date.
Unread threads ride at the top with a count; a muted one shows a dot instead.
A deleted message never becomes the preview: the row shows the last message
still standing.

On a phone, an open thread takes the whole screen with a slim bar at the top,
so the messages keep the room while you type. The arrow in that bar goes back
to the list.

## Finding things

**Search threads**, above the thread list, matches thread names and the last
line in each. Inside a thread, the magnifier searches the messages on this
device, and choosing a result scrolls to it.

A long thread opens where you stopped reading, with a line marking what is
new. Scroll up and a pill appears to bring you back to the bottom, counting
anything that arrived while you were reading further up.

## Getting told

You get one notification when a thread you have not read has something new,
and no more until you read it, so a busy thread does not buzz a phone forty
times. Type `@` and a name to mention someone: they get a notification of
their own for that message, even when they already have an unread one from
the thread.

To hear nothing from a thread, open its details and choose **Mute this thread**. It stays in the list, just quietly, and
that covers mentions too.

The bell holds one list per person. A question waiting for you in a team
workspace still reaches you while you are in your personal one. A row from
another workspace names it, and opening the row switches to that workspace
before it opens the thread. See
[Sharing and permissions](https://themarginapp.com/docs/sharing-and-permissions) for how
connections work.

### Push notifications on this device

With the app closed, a notification can still reach the device. Turn it on in **Settings → Notifications**, once on each device, because
permission to interrupt you belongs to the phone or laptop and not to your
account.

- A banner carries whatever the bell would carry: a chat message, a chore
  waiting for approval, a salary that landed.
- If you belong to more than one workspace, the banner's title starts with
  the name of the one it is about, and tapping it lands you there.
- Tapping a banner reuses the tab you already have open. Nothing pops up
  while you are looking at Margin, since the bell and the sound have already
  told you.
- Muting a thread silences its banners too.
- **Send a test** goes the same way as a real notification and
  reaches every device you have turned on.

**Push on an iPhone or iPad**

1. Open themarginapp.com in Safari and tap **Share**.
2. Choose **Add to Home Screen**.
3. Open Margin from the new icon and go to **Settings → Notifications**.
   The switch only works from the Home Screen app.

### Sounds

**Settings → Notifications** also has six short sounds: Glass,

Marimba, Wood, Bell, Pop and Chime, plus Silent. You choose one for each of
three things: anything the app needs to tell you, a chat message, and someone
mentioning you. Tap one to hear it.

Your three choices and the volume follow your account to every device. The
on/off switch can also be set per device, so a work laptop can stay quiet
while your phone does not.

A few moments stay silent on purpose:

- a message in the thread you are reading, or one that lands while you are
  typing in that thread's box;
- the first few seconds after the app opens, because the first sync arrives as
  a pile of history and nobody wants to hear all of it at once;
- anything before your first click or key press on the page, because browsers
  refuse to play sound until then. The message still arrives, just silently.

## Threads about a thing

A thread can belong to a record. On a record of money owed, **Discuss this** opens that debt's own thread, and once one
exists the button reads **Open the conversation**, so both
people always land in the same place. Margin Intelligence can find a record's
thread when you ask about the record.

## Someone not on Margin

They have no account to send to. Instead, open the thread's details and
choose **Download the transcript**: a plain text file you can send them any
way you like.

> **On the phone:** The phone app has threads, reactions, replies, mentions and mute.
> The transcript leaves through the phone's share sheet instead of a
> download.

> **For agents:** Ask Margin Intelligence what someone said, or tell it to let the family know
> something, and it reads or writes in the thread as you
> (`list_chat_threads`, `list_chat_messages`, `send_chat_message`,
> `create_chat_thread`, `react_to_chat_message`). It only sees threads you are
> in.

**Where to next**

- [Family](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family): the household the workspace thread is for
- [Sharing and permissions](https://themarginapp.com/docs/sharing-and-permissions): connections, and who can reach you
- [Working offline](https://themarginapp.com/docs/working-offline): what waits for a signal


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Section: Together. Checked against the running product on October 25, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/chat. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt