Questions, answered.

A place to gather everything you watch, read, listen to, play, and visit—on one page, in your own arrangement. Then see what the people you follow are into.

No. Anyone can create an account. Members still get invites to hand out, but they're a way to bring a friend—not a gate.

Three doors, all on the sign-in page: continue with Google, an email and password, or an emailed sign-in link if you'd rather not have a password at all.

Today, all of tonal is free to use, and there are no ads—we don't sell your data or take money to put things in front of you. Our plan is to be member supported.

Not yet, but you can add tonal to your home screen and it will behave like one.

On an iPhone, open tonal in Safari, tap the share icon, and choose Add to Home Screen. On an Android phone, open tonal in Chrome, tap the three-dot menu, and choose Add to Home screen. Either way it opens full screen, without the address bar and buttons around it.

Tap the search circle in the bottom-right corner of any page and type a title. Pick a result to open it, then use the shelf button at the bottom of that window to choose where it goes—Watched, Reading, Want to go. It lands on that shelf straight away.

Tap any cover to open it. Along the bottom of that window are your stars and a heart on the left, and the shelf button on the right; the pencil beside the stars opens a note. Half stars work, and a heart is its own thing—the shorthand for something that really landed.

Open the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner) and choose Edit. You can then drag whole shelves into the order you want, and drag covers around within a shelf. Done, at the bottom of the screen, exits. Each shelf also keeps its own sort—tap the shelf's title (it reads something like "Films — Watched — Recent") to change it.

Cover art is looked up from public catalogs. When nothing matches confidently you get a plain lettered tile rather than a picture of the wrong thing—a blank is better than a mistake.

If a cover is wrong, email hey@tonal.cc with the title and we'll fix the match.

Search covers the big public catalogs for each medium, but they have gaps—small-press books, indie games, and new releases are the usual misses. Send the title to hey@tonal.cc and we'll look at why.

Letterboxd, Goodreads, Last.fm, Spotify, Steam, and podcasts you watch on YouTube. Open the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner) and choose Connect, then pick a service and follow the steps on its card.

Letterboxd and Last.fm re-sync every hour without you doing anything. The others are point-in-time imports—run them again whenever you want to catch up.

No. Items are matched by what they are, not by where they came from, so re-importing the same library is a no-op—and the same album arriving from two different services stays one item.

Never. A sync only fills in what's missing. Anything you wrote or rated yourself is left exactly as you left it.

Your items stay. Disconnect from the service's card under Connect; it stops future syncing and takes nothing off your shelves.

Go to their page—tonal.cc/theirusername—and tap Follow, beside their name at the top. Their adds and ratings then show up under Activity in the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner), and they appear on your People shelf. You can also find people through search.

Each shelf header has a small link icon at its right end—one tap copies that shelf's address. Tapping the shelf's title instead opens its menu, where Share this shelf builds an image card you can post. For a single thing, open it and use the link icon at the top right of the window.

A weekly digest of what the people you follow have been into, and the occasional note when something meaningful changes. Every one has an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

By default, anyone with the link—a tonal profile is meant to be shared. To change that, open the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner), choose Settings, and turn on Private profile under Privacy.

Everything. It's enforced by the database, not just hidden in the interface—a private profile drops out of other people's feeds, search, and follower lists.

Both live under Data in Settings (the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner) → Settings): Export your data, Delete my data, and Delete my account. Your data spells out exactly what we keep and what happens when you delete it.

No. An import is tallied on your device and the raw file is discarded—only what ends up on a shelf is saved.

Links are good for 24 hours. Go to the sign-in page, enter your email, and choose "Email me a sign-in link" for a fresh one. Your account and everything on it is still there.

Check spam first. If it's not there, ask for a sign-in link from the sign-in page—that works whether or not you ever set a password.

Email hey@tonal.cc with what you were doing and what you saw—a screenshot helps. Send feedback in the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner) opens the same address.

Email hey@tonal.cc, or use Send feedback in the account menu (your avatar, in the bottom-right corner)—it opens the same address.