Unlike other photo-sharing social media apps, BeReal isn't made for endless posting and scrolling. Instead, BeReal only lets you post one photo each day — and it's pretty specific about when it wants you to post that photo too.
Here's how to post on BeReal, and how its daily posting system works.
How to post on BeReal
BeReal's gimmick is that each user can only post one photo each day, and they only get a couple of minutes to take it. This is so you can't spend hours preparing a perfect glamor shot — it encourages you to capture a random moment of your everyday life, no filters included.
At a random time every day (usually between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.), you'll get a notification from BeReal titled Time to BeReal.
Every single BeReal user in the same general area of the world (Americas, Europe, East Asia, or West Asia) gets this same notification at the exact same time, and it's essentially an announcement that you're now allowed to post your one daily photo.
The next time you open the app, it'll immediately turn on your phone's camera and give you a two minute countdown timer. You've now got two minutes to take a BeReal photo, give it a caption if you want, and then post it. You can add a caption after uploading the photo too.
Within those two minutes, you're allowed to retake your photo as many times as you like. But if the two minutes pass without you settling on a picture, you'll miss your opportunity for the day. You have to post a photo to see anyone else's.
BeReal posts can be public or private
By default, any photo you post on BeReal only gets added to your private My Friends feed. This means that the only people who can see your photo are the ones on your friends list.
But when you're posting your photo, you'll also have a chance to make it public. To do this, take your photo, but before you send it, tap the small globe icon near the bottom next to your location. This will set the photo's visibility to Discovery.
Posts set to Discovery also get added to BeReal's public Discovery page, which displays BeReal posts from across the world as they get uploaded in real-time.
To see this page, just open your BeReal feed and tap Discovery at the top.
How to post a comment or RealMoji on BeReal
Along with posting your own photos, you've got two ways to interact with other people's photos: Comments and RealMojis.
Comments are just what they sound like. You can add a comment to someone's BeReal post by tapping the white speech bubble icon in the bottom-right corner of the photo.
Tap the smiley face icon under that to send a RealMoji. These are quick reactions you can add to someone's post by taking a photo of yourself imitating a certain Emoji.
