COPY is a charming take on voice notes that wants you to remember the joys of the walkie-talkie. Add some friends, turn the dial to one of their channels, and hold the button to talk. It’s a gloriously simple proposition, and you can customize it with a series of themed skins that change the entire vibe of the app.
Those skins are where the app really earns its keep – wonderfully rendered gadget designs, each with its own sound and feel. There’s WT-01, an aluminium retro-futuristic radio; Rams, a Dieter Rams-inspired compact build; Interlinked, a neon cyberpunk rig with glitching scanlines; and RX-80, a roller-controlled build with a mini LCD. Playing with the tactile keypads, dials, chunky buttons, d-pads, and rollers feels great in a world where smartphones are little more than black rectangles, and the satisfying beeps and clicks of the audio design seal the illusion that you’re handling a real piece of retro kit rather than tapping a screen.
Underneath all that is asynchronous voice messaging – closer to the voice notes already sitting in Messages or WhatsApp than a true walkie-talkie, if you’re feeling cynical. But COPY is all about the theatre and thrill of the back-and-forth conversation. You get 12 channels to assign to friends or groups, encouraging voice chat in an age where fewer people than ever like picking up the phone. It’s nice to have a dedicated place to catch up with friends that’s not owned by a tech giant intent on tracking and advertising to you.
One quirk that bugged me is that some skins fill the screen, while others sit with white padding around the edges. It’s a small distinction, but it’s the difference between holding an iPhone with a picture of a walkie-talkie on it, and feeling like your iPhone becomes a walkie-talkie. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ll take the full-screen ones every time. Still, that’s a small peeve and doesn’t detract form the excellent design work that’s gone into the many different UIs available.
Everything’s fully encrypted, with no account setup or other faff – your device is your identity, and nothing’s stored, not even by COPY itself. But the catch, one I’ve seen many times before, is that COPY is only as fun as the friends you can drag onto it with you. If you’ve got a friend group willing to buy in, COPY is a charming way to converse. It’s free to download and use, with extra skins sold individually for $2/£2 each.