Help & guides

WhatsApp has one strict rule that surprises millions of people every day: you cannot start a new chat with a phone number unless it is already saved in your phone's address book. There is no "new chat by number" button anywhere in the app. This is intentional — WhatsApp treats your contact list as its social graph — but it is deeply inconvenient when a delivery driver, an Uber host, a landlord, or a seller from Facebook Marketplace sends you a random +number.

The official workaround is a click-to-chat link: https://wa.me/<full number in international format>. Tapping it opens a fresh WhatsApp chat with that number without ever touching your address book. The format is strict — no plus sign, no spaces, no dashes, and the country code must be included. So +852 9123 4567 becomes https://wa.me/85291234567.

Ringlink builds this URL for you automatically. Type or paste any number on the home page, pick the country (or let auto-detect do it), and tap the WhatsApp button. Your recent numbers stay in your browser — they are never saved to WhatsApp, iCloud, or Google Contacts.

LINE is the dominant messenger in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, but its "add friend" flow confuses newcomers. Unlike WhatsApp, LINE does not reliably let you start a chat from an arbitrary phone number: the other person must have "Allow friend requests by phone number" switched on, and both accounts must be tied to real phone numbers in the same or supported region.

What works everywhere is the LINE ID lookup: line://ti/p/~<id>or the web equivalent https://line.me/ti/p/~<id>. If someone gave you their LINE ID (e.g. @ringlinkhk, without the @), Ringlink builds this deep link so LINE opens straight to their profile card.

If you only have a phone number, Ringlink still tries the phone-based deep link, but be prepared for LINE to say "user not found" — that almost always means the other party has phone-number lookup disabled, not that you typed the wrong number.

WeChat is fundamentally different from Western messengers. Users are identified by their WeChat ID (a short username set once, then locked) or by a WeChat-generated ID like wxid_xxxxx. Phone numbers are optional and are usually private — the only reliable way to open a WeChat conversation with a stranger is to know their WeChat ID or scan their personal QR code.

Ringlink's WeChat button uses weixin:// to open the app, then copies the ID or number to your clipboard so you can paste it into the "Add contacts" search. For QR codes shared as images, use Ringlink's Scan tab — it decodes the QR locally in your browser and hands the resulting weixin:// link back to WeChat.

Telegram is the most flexible of the mainstream messengers. If you know someone's username, the URL https://t.me/<username>opens a chat with them anywhere in the world, no contact save needed. If you only have their phone number, the deep link tg://resolve?phone=<number> works when both accounts are on Telegram — otherwise Telegram will offer to invite them by SMS.

On the Ringlink home page, typing a number that starts with @ automatically switches to username mode and shows the Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, and WeChat launchers instead of the phone-based ones.

A QR code is just a compressed URL or short block of text. When you scan a business card QR, it usually contains one of three things: a plain phone number (tel:+1…), a full vCard block (starts with BEGIN:VCARD), or a link to a hosted contact page.

Ringlink's scanner detects all three. Plain numbers open the dial page. vCards are parsed into their fields (name, phone, email, organization, socials) and saved to your local Scanned Cards list. Ringlink share links are fetched from our backend so the recipient sees the same rich card the sender designed — no app install required on either side.

When you create your own card on the Card page, publishing gives you a short URL like ringlink.app/c/abc12 and a QR code that encodes it. You can also download a .vcf file that any phone can save straight into its contacts.

Every messaging app in the world expects phone numbers in the E.164 format: a plus sign, the country code, and the national number, with no spaces or dashes. Example: a Hong Kong mobile 9123 4567 becomes +85291234567.

The most common mistakes are keeping the leading 0 from a national number (many European and Asian countries write mobiles as 09…, but the 0 is stripped when adding the country code) or forgetting the country code entirely. Ringlink strips punctuation and warns you before opening a link if the number looks incomplete.