The code didn't arrive

You typed your number, tapped Send Verification Code, and nothing arrived. Work down this list; the first four take a few seconds each.

Check these first

1. Wait a minute. Text messages are usually instant and occasionally are not. A code stays valid for fifteen minutes, so a late one is still usable when it turns up.
2. Check the number you typed, including the country. A code sent to a number one digit out is delivered to somebody else, and nothing on your phone will show it.
3. Look in your phone’s spam or filtered-messages folder. Phones and networks filter messages from unknown short numbers, and this is the single commonest cause.
4. Check you have signal. A text arrives over the mobile network, not over your data connection or Wi-Fi.

Then use the buttons on the screen

The verification screen has three, and they do different things:

• Resend Code sends another one. You can ask for three codes in ten minutes; after that the app makes you wait, which is a limit on the number rather than on you.
• Already have a code? on the sign-in screen goes straight to the code entry, for when the text turned up after you had given up and closed the app.
• ← Use a different number starts again with another number — a second phone, or the same number typed correctly this time.

Each new code replaces the previous one. If two arrive, the newest one is the only one that works.

The code is refused rather than missing

If a code arrives and is rejected, one of three things is true: it has expired after fifteen minutes, a newer code has replaced it, or it was mistyped. You get three attempts at a code before you need a fresh one, so it is worth reading the digits off the message rather than from memory.

If none of that worked, tell us — it genuinely helps

This is the one problem where a message from you is the whole of the evidence. Delivery of a text can fail for a single country, a single network or a single number, and from here that looks identical to a message that was delivered and quietly filtered. Nobody can see it happening; the reports we get back say the message left successfully in both cases.

The verification screen has Didn’t get a code?, which writes the mail for you and fills in the things that make a report usable — the number you entered, the country, the time, your app version and how many codes were requested. Send it as it is; there is nothing else you need to add, though anything you noticed is welcome.

If you cannot reach that screen, write to support@friendtrack.net and say which country and number you tried, and roughly when.

While you wait

Nothing else in the app needs a code. If somebody has already sent you an invitation, it will still work once you are signed in — see join a Group you were invited to.