User Profile

Your Pentos User Profile is how other people see you across Pentos. In your profile, you can update your name, username, profile picture, status, bio and location, and find and manage your friends.

Your Profile Page

Your profile is one page:

• Cover: a banner across the top, shaded in your theme’s colors, with the pencil (Edit profile) at its top right. See Editing Your Profile.
• Profile card: on the left, with your photo over the bottom edge of the cover.
• Tabs: to the right of the card, Friends, Team and Preferences. Team is greyed out (“Coming soon”). When there isn’t room beside the card, the tabs move under it.

Your profile card shows, from the top:

• Photo: click it to change your picture. A camera icon appears when you hover it.
• Status: at the corner of your photo, your status emoji, or a smiley (“Set a status”) when you haven’t set one. Click it to set, update or clear your status. See Setting a Status.
• Name: your name, with your @username under it.
• Friends: up to 3 of your friends’ photos and how many friends you have.
• About: your bio, occupation, location with your local time (from your timezone), and the month you joined, always in that order, with a dash for any you haven’t filled in.

Friends lists your friend requests and friends, and has a search box for finding people to add. See Friends.

Preferences is only on your own profile, and holds your profile’s privacy:

• Public profile: who can see your details. See Public profile.
• Blocked: the people you’ve blocked, with Unblock next to each. See Unblocking a User.

Account settings live in Settings > Account instead: Subscription, Security (Multi-Factor Authentication and Auto-Logout), and Preferences.

Viewing Your Profile

There are a few ways to open your profile:

• User menu: in the top-right corner of the app, click your name at the top of the menu.
• Collab menu: hover Collab in the header and pick Profile.
• Collab: click your profile at the top of the left sidebar.
• Friend notifications: these open your profile, where your friend requests are.
• User Profile panel: clicking an @mention of you in a Collab message opens the User Profile panel. It’s read-only, so click your photo there to open your full profile.

Editing Your Profile

To edit your profile, open it using any of the methods above and click the pencil (Edit profile) at the top right of the cover. In Edit profile, change any of the fields below, then click Save changes, or Cancel to leave everything as it was. If the username is taken or invalid, an error appears under the name fields and nothing is saved until you fix it.

• First and last name: Your display name shown in conversations, friend lists, and profiles.
• Username: A unique identifier other people can use to find you. Usernames are case-insensitive, must be between 4 and 25 characters, and can’t contain *, %, _, or a backslash.
• Bio and Location: See below.

To change your profile picture, click your photo on your profile (a camera icon appears when you hover it) and pick a new one. Supported formats are PNG, JPG, JPEG, and WEBP, up to 25 MB. Anyone signed in to Pentos can see your picture.

Setting a Status

Your status lets contacts know what you are up to at a glance, with an emoji and a short note. You set it on your profile, from the status at the corner of your photo: your status emoji, or a smiley when you haven’t set one.

• Set or change it: click the smiley or your status. A small bar grows out of it, with your current status already in it: click the emoji button to pick an emoji, type up to 100 characters, and press Enter to save. Press Escape, click or tab anywhere else, or click the status again to close it without saving.
• Clear: in the bar, click Clear to empty the emoji and text, then press Enter to save your status blank.

If Pentos can’t save it, you’ll see “Sorry, we couldn’t update your status.” The Status item in the user menu shows whether Pentos services are running, not your own status.

Your status shows in these places:

• Messages list: people who have a direct message with you and can see your profile see your emoji next to your name in Collab, with the text on hover. This needs both an emoji and text, and updates for them within a few seconds, without reloading their list. Your friends and the people you message see a new status the next time they open your profile; anyone else sees it within 15 minutes.
• Your profile: at the corner of your photo, on your profile and in the User Profile panel. Hover it to see the text.
• Your own name: at the top of the user menu and the Collab left sidebar, when you have set both an emoji and text.

Only your friends can see your status, unless your profile is public.

Bio

Share more about yourself in your Bio. Your bio is also used when Personalize is enabled in Chats:

• Occupation: Your role or job title (up to 50 characters).
• Interests: Topics or hobbies you enjoy (up to 100 characters). They aren’t shown on your profile card.
• About: A short description about yourself (up to 250 characters).

Location

You can share your general location so contacts in different regions know your time zone. Your default location is also used as a fallback when Location is enabled in Chats:

• Country and State / Region: Pick from the dropdown menus.
• City: Optional. Type it in (up to 30 characters) once you’ve picked a country and region.
• Timezone: Choose one from the list, for example Eastern Time, London or Tokyo. Your profile shows your local time from it. Leave it on Auto-detect if you don’t want a local time shown on your profile; Pentos doesn’t work one out from your location.

Picking a new country clears the region and city, and picking a new region clears the city, so they always match.

Public profile

Your bio, location, status and friends list are private by default: only your friends can see them. To show them to everyone on Pentos, open the Preferences tab on your profile and turn on Public profile. It saves straight away; if Pentos can’t save it, you’ll see an error and the switch goes back. You can also turn it on when you create your account. Turn it off again at any time. Anyone you’ve blocked, or who has blocked you, can’t see them either way.

Your name, username and avatar are visible to everyone on Pentos, so people can find you, message you, or add you to a group chat or channel. Your profile also shows everyone your friend count, number of mutual friends and the month you joined. A block changes both: see What Blocking Does. Your list of friends itself stays private unless your profile is public.

Viewing Other Profiles

Click someone’s avatar on their message, an @mention of them, or a member in a chat’s Chat Info, to open the User Profile panel. It shows the same profile card as their profile, under a strip of cover. Click their photo, or their friends, to open their full profile. You can also click Profile next to a member in a conversation or channel’s Manage panel, click a member in Group Info, Channel Info or a file or folder’s Info sidebar, or click someone on a Friends tab.

Their profile card shows, from the top:

• Photo and status: their status emoji sits at the corner of their photo. Hover it to see their status.
• Buttons: where you stand with them, then Message and Huddle. See below.
• Name: their name, with their @username under it.
• Friends: up to 3 of their friends’ photos, how many friends they have and how many you share, such as “12 friends · 3 mutual”.
• About: their bio, occupation, location with their local time, and the month they joined, with a dash for any they haven’t filled in.

The buttons under their photo, on their profile and in the panel:

• Add friend: sends a friend request. It then turns into a clock (Cancel request): click it to take the request back.
• Respond: shows when they’ve sent you a friend request. Click it and choose Accept or Decline.
• Friends: shows when you’re friends. Click it and choose Unfriend, then Remove friend to confirm.
• Message: opens your direct message with them, or starts one.
• Huddle: starts a Huddle with them right where you are, or joins the one already running, without opening your direct message. The panel closes as it starts. It’s greyed out (“Already in a call”) while you’re already in a call.

The friend button appears once your friends and requests have loaded. It changes as soon as you click it, and if Pentos can’t complete the action, you’ll see an error and it goes back to how it was.

On their profile, More (the three dots at the top right of the cover) has Block. A second click on Respond, Friends or More closes its menu. Back, above the cover, returns to wherever you opened their profile from: the channel or conversation, Updates, Tasks, or the profile before it. Otherwise it goes to your own profile.

Anyone signed in to Pentos can see a person’s display name, username and avatar, and their profile shows anyone their friend count, number of mutual friends and the month they joined. A block changes this: see What Blocking Does. Their bio, location, status, and friends list are shown only to their friends, unless they’ve made their profile public. If someone’s details aren’t shown to you, their card says Private profile, with their counts and the month they joined, and their profile says “{name}‘s profile is private” with “To see their details, add them as a friend.” Becoming friends with them makes these visible. When you can see their friends list, it’s on their Friends tab, with you first if you’re friends and your mutual friends next. See Viewing Someone Else’s Friends.

Their card can also say:

• You blocked them: “You blocked {name}.” On their profile, click Unblock to lift the block.
• Not available: “User not found” in place of their name, and “This profile isn’t available”. The account may have been deleted, or you may not have access to it.
• Couldn’t load: “Sorry, we couldn’t load their profile.” Click Try again.

Limits

Privacy

Your occupation, interests, about text and location (country, region and city) are encrypted at rest. Your name, username, picture, status and timezone are not. Anyone signed in to Pentos can find you by searching your name, username or full email address, but your email address is never shown to them. For more details on how Pentos protects your data, see Security.