Apps & technology

No. Surrounders works fully in any modern browser - on your phone, tablet, or desktop computer. Browsing pros, booking, messaging, reviews, your calendar: all of it runs on the website with nothing to download. You can even browse without an account; you only sign up when you want to book or message someone.

Installing to your home screen is an optional convenience, not a requirement. It gives you an app icon, full-screen opening, and push notifications, but the features are identical either way.

Desktop deserves a mention: Surrounders is not a phone-only product. Managing bookings, writing longer messages, or setting up a pro profile is often more comfortable on a bigger screen, and everything stays in sync because it is one account across all your devices.

So a reasonable setup is: use the website anywhere, and add Surrounders to your phone's home screen if you like having it one tap away.

Open surrounders.com in Safari on your iPhone, tap the Share button (the square with an arrow pointing up), scroll down, tap "Add to Home Screen", then tap "Add". The whole thing takes about 15 seconds. Surrounders gets its own icon on your home screen and from then on opens full screen, like any other app.

Use Safari for this step - it is the browser that handles home-screen installs on iPhone.

Once installed:

• It opens instantly from the icon, no address bar, no browser chrome.
• Push notifications work, so booking updates and messages reach you even when the app is closed.
• It is the same product as the website: same account, same bookings, same chats. Nothing to sync, nothing to set up twice.

You can remove it any time the way you remove any app: press and hold the icon, then delete. Your account and data are unaffected - they live in your account, not on the phone.

Open surrounders.com in Chrome on your Android phone. Either accept the install prompt when it appears, or tap the three-dot menu in the corner and choose "Install app" (on some phones it says "Add to Home screen"). Confirm, and Surrounders appears on your home screen. It takes well under a minute.

After that it behaves like a regular app:

• Its own icon, opens full screen without the browser bar.
• Push notifications for booking updates and new messages, even when it is closed.
• Same account and data as the website - install nothing twice, sign in once.

If you do not see an install option, make sure Chrome is up to date, or just keep using Surrounders in the browser tab. Installing is a convenience, not a requirement - everything works the same either way.

To uninstall, remove the icon the way you remove any app. Your account stays intact; it is stored in your account, not on the device.

Mostly no, and it is better to say that plainly: browsing pros, booking, and messaging all need an internet connection. If you open Surrounders with no connection, you will see a simple offline page rather than a broken screen, and everything comes back the moment you are online again.

Why the honest limitation: Surrounders is a live marketplace. Availability calendars, chat, and booking statuses change in real time, so showing you a stale cached copy could mean booking a slot that no longer exists. A clear offline page is more truthful than a page that looks current but is not.

Two practical tips:

• Each booking has an "Add to calendar" download, so the time and details sit in your phone's own calendar, connection or not.
• If you were offline for a while, give the app a moment to refresh after reconnecting so calendars and chats catch up.

If pages will not load while you clearly have a connection, that is a different problem - see the linked troubleshooting answer.

Yes, in the Surrounders mobile app. You can unlock and sign in with Face ID or your fingerprint instead of typing a password. It is strictly opt-in: biometric login stays off until you turn it on yourself, and you can switch it back off whenever you like.

A few things worth knowing:

• Your face or fingerprint never leaves your phone. The app uses your device's own biometric check; Surrounders only learns that the check passed.
• It replaces typing your password on that one device. Your other devices and the website are unaffected.
• If biometrics fail or you prefer not to use them, email and password (or Google sign-in) always work as a fallback.

In the browser and the home-screen version, sign in the usual way: email and password, or Google. The availability of the native mobile app itself is covered in the mobile app answer linked below.

No, not yet. Surrounders has no public API and no third-party integrations today - nothing to connect to Zapier, no calendar auto-sync, no widgets to embed. We would rather tell you that plainly than hint at something that does not exist.

What does exist:

• Calendar files: every booking has an "Add to calendar" button that downloads a standard .ics file, which any calendar app (Google, Apple, Outlook) can open. It is a one-time download per booking, not a live sync.
• Share links: any service can be shared with a plain link that works for anyone, account or not.

If you are a pro who wants Surrounders talking to your other tools, or a developer with an integration in mind, tell us what you would build: [email protected], tagged "suggestion". Every idea is read, and real requests are exactly what shapes what gets built next.

Yes. Every connection to Surrounders is encrypted with HTTPS - the padlock you see in your browser's address bar. That covers everything: browsing, login, bookings, and every chat message, on every page, whether you are on the website or the home-screen app. Nothing travels between you and Surrounders unencrypted.

There is also a simpler layer of protection: Surrounders never asks for payment details. You pay pros directly, in cash or however you both agree, so there is no card number, bank login, or wallet to type in anywhere on the platform. Data that does not exist cannot leak. If a page claiming to be Surrounders ever asks for card details, it is not Surrounders - close it and tell us at [email protected].

Your account data is stored in EU data centers, and you stay in control of where you are signed in: Settings lists your active sessions and devices, and you can sign any of them out individually if something looks unfamiliar.

Surrounders supports the current versions of the 4 major browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge, on phones, tablets, and desktop computers alike. If your browser has updated itself in the last few months, which nearly all of them do automatically, you are fine and there is nothing to configure.

There is no "best" browser for Surrounders - the experience is the same across all of them. Use whichever you already have:

• iPhone and iPad: Safari (also the one that handles home-screen installs).
• Android: Chrome.
• Desktop: any of the four.

Very old browser versions may render pages oddly or fail to load parts of the site. The fix is almost always a browser update, not anything on our side. If a page misbehaves, trying a second browser is a quick way to tell whether the browser is the problem.

Still stuck on a supported, up-to-date browser? Write to [email protected] with what you tried and a screenshot.

Surrounders asks for a permission only at the moment a feature needs it, and only for that feature. Nothing is requested upfront at signup or install, and you can say no to any of them - the rest of the platform keeps working normally.

What each permission is for:

• Camera / photos: only when you attach a photo, for example in a chat or on your profile.
• Contacts: only if you use the invite feature in the mobile app and choose to pick people from your contacts. Never read otherwise.
• Location: only when you use "near me" search or share your location in a chat, so distances can be shown.
• Notifications: only if you want push alerts for bookings and messages.

Declining a permission simply means that one feature is unavailable: no camera access means no photo attachments, no location means no near-me sorting. You can change your mind later in your device or browser settings.