What Is HEYID and How Does It Work?

HEYID is a chat app built around one idea: you should be able to talk to someone in another country without either of you learning the other's language. You type in your language. The other person reads it in theirs. That's the core of it, and most of what follows is detail.

How the translation works

You open the app, start a conversation with someone new, and HEYID translates the messages between your two languages in the background. There's no copying text into another tab and no extra app to juggle.

Say Ana writes in Spanish from Mexico City and Kenji reads Japanese in Tokyo. Each of them sees the conversation in their own language, and neither has to think about the machinery.

It's worth being honest about the limits, though. Automatic translation is good at plain sentences and worse at slang, idioms and jokes. "It's raining cats and dogs" will confuse any translator. A few habits help a lot: keep sentences short, say what you mean directly, and if something lands strangely, rephrase it instead of repeating it.

Voice

HEYID also supports voice. On the free plan you can send voice messages. Voice translation, where people speaking different languages can talk to each other, is part of the paid plans.

SPARX, the built-in assistant

SPARX is an AI assistant that lives inside the chat. It's there to help you keep the conversation going, not to replace the other person. In practice it does three things: it suggests replies when you don't know what to say, it helps when a conversation stalls, and you can also just chat with it directly.

If you've ever stared at a new chat thinking "what do I even write?", the first two are the useful bits.

What's free and what isn't

This is the setup at the time of writing. Plans and prices can change, so check the pricing page before you rely on it.

• Free: text chat, voice messages, 20 messages a day and 10 SPARX uses a day. No voice translation.
• Basic, $6.99 a month: 100 minutes a month, voice translation, and unlimited SPARX and messages.
• Standard, $12.99 a month: 300 minutes a month, with the same features.
• Unlimited, $29.99 a month: 500 minutes a month, with the same features.

The paid plans differ mainly in monthly minutes. The free plan is enough to see whether the idea works for you.

Who it's for

HEYID suits people who are curious about other countries, people practising a language who want a real person to talk to, and anyone who's simply bored on a Tuesday evening and would like a conversation that isn't with someone they already know.

It's not a replacement for a professional translator. If you need every word exactly right, for a contract or a medical question, don't rely on a chat app.

As with any platform where you talk to people you don't know, the usual online common sense applies: keep personal details private and trust your instincts. There's a short, practical guide to that in How to Stay Safe When Meeting People Online.

Getting started

HEYID is listed on Google Play. You'll find the download link on the Get HEYID page, and the full feature and pricing overview lives on heyid.online.

If you'd like something to say once you're in, the 50 questions to ask someone from another country are a good place to start.