The latest Amino Apps anomalies & possible solutions.

Amino Apps s may have noticed in recent weeks some anomalies on the platform.

⨁⨂⨁⨂⨁Content Issues⨂⨁⨂⨁⨂

The first issue relates to images that seem to have half-disappeared.

What & Where

The areas affected include:

:warning: Custom chat room backgrounds disappear, replaced with a plain background of the Community's theme colour, as set in ACM.

:warning: Custom chat room Cover Images disappear, replaced by a plain grey image placeholder.

This occurs in My Chats and within the settings of a chat room (where the rules are found).

:warning: Animated GIF profile images disappear in most circumstances but remain visible in some.

Profile images lose visibility

• in My Chats - on the conversation list and My Favourite .

• in Chatrooms (Public, Group and one-on-one) within chat conversations.

• on posts on the Feed (of the post author).

• on the list of .

• on ACM.

• on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen (in any Community).

• on the Recent and Global chat areas accessible via your global profile.

• on lists of followers on a Global profile (though this seems to only affect some profiles listed) or a Community Profile.

• on the ‘Community Profiles’ list accessible via your Global Profile.

In all these situations, the circle that a Profile image usually appears in, is greyed out.

Profile images are unaffected when viewing on the 's profile.

If you have an affected profile image, it remains visible on the top of the Side Menu, in any Community you are using that image in.

:warning: Animated GIF Cover Images on blogs, polls, Questions, Wiki entries and quizzes that have been posted to the Feed, appear greyed out on the main area of the Feed and also in the Featured Posts area, on previously Featured items.

While these covers appear greyed out, tapping on the space opens the actual content and the animated image appears as it should.

It's important to note that content posted recently since the anomalies began, seems to remain unaffected.

:warning: Images (animated and still) within chat conversations (in one-on-one, group or pubic chat environments) disappear, replaced by a space the same original shape and size though greyed out or greyed out with a picture icon in the centre.

Tapping on the ‘image’ reverts to a view of the full image, as it should appear.

∆ Community Launch Images utilising an animated GIF appear to be unaffected.

They appear as usual in My Communities (on the ‘Discover’ and ‘Communities’ tabs), the About page of Communities, on Leader Picks and when launching a Community.

Why

Many s will automatically assume that this is a 'bug' but there's nothing to indicate that this is the actual reason.

Another possibility could simply be that it was intentional, in order to save on resources with regards to old content and profiles.

Unless TA specifically makes an announcement on the matter, all opinions are speculation.

Impact

There are psychological impacts that exist.

For most, it's simply annoying and inconvenient.

You want to see content that makes a Community inviting, welcoming and engaging, not patches of grey.

For a select number of s, it may be of a higher impact.

For instance, there may be other s with whom a connection or bond was formed but they are no longer active or left the Community and elements that remain as reminders are now gone (possibly forever).

This is the digital equivalent to having a photograph, letter as the only keepsake of someone you've lost with and that item being destroyed.

Solutions

In such cases where the is no longer active or a member of the relevant Community, there is little that can be done.

Nobody else can access their profile or content to attempt any fix.

If you are still an active , things are a little more promising.

Profile Images

Some profile images can be restored. :white_check_mark:

How

① Navigate to the relevant Community profile.

② Tap the three dots (...) at the top right >

③ Tap ‘Edit my profile’ >

④ Tap within the circle of your profile image >

⑤ Select ‘Gallery’ >

⑥ Search and select the relevant image >

⑦ Tap on the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) in the top right corner to confirm. (It should turn blue.) >

⑧ Tap on the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) at top right of your profile to Save >

⑨ Exit your profile >

⑩ Exit the Community >

⑪ Relaunch the Community to see the result.

Post Images

Some post images can be restored. :white_check_mark:

Note that a successful restoration will affect the content’s 'last edited' dates.

How

① Navigate to the Community Feed or your Profile feed, as required, wherever the content is located.

② Select the relevant blog >

③ Tap on the three dots (...) at the top right >

④ Tap on ‘Edit’ >

⑤ Tap the image icon in the bottom left corner (not the camera) >

⑥ Tap on the 'Edit' (✎) icon to the right of the image >

⑦ Select ‘Delete’ >

⑧ Tap ‘Add new’ >

⑨ Select ‘Gallery’ >

⑩ Select the image >

⑪ Select the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) in the top right corner to confirm. (It will turn blue) >

⑫ Tap the green 'Pick' button to complete image selection >

⑬ Tap the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) at the top to exit image allocation >

⑭ Tap the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) at the top to Save >

⑮ Exit the blog >

⑯ Exit the Community >

⑰ Relaunch the Community to see the result.

(Note that this describes restoration of an image in a Blog post. For other post types, the process will be similar.)

Chat Cover Images

Some Chat cover images can be restored. :white_check_mark:

How

① Navigate to My Chats, the Chats section of your Global profile or the Public chatroom section of the Community, as relevant, wherever the chatroom is located.

② Select the relevant chat room >

③ Tap the gear (⚙) icon at the top right >

④ Tap the three dots (...) at the top right >

⑤ Tap on ‘Edit’

⑥ Tap on ‘Change the cover’ >

⑦ Select ‘Gallery’ >

⑧ Search and select the relevant image >

⑨ Tap the image to select >

⑩ Tap on the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) to confirm (it should turn blue.) >

⑪ Tap on the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) to Save >

⑫ Exit the chatroom >

⑬ Exit the Community >

⑭ Relaunch the Community to see the results.

Background Images

Chat background can be restored. :white_check_mark:

How

① Navigate to My Chats, the Chats section of your Global profile or the Public chatroom section of the Community, as relevant, wherever the chatroom is located.

② Select the relevant chat room >

③ Tap on the gear (⚙) icon at the top right >

④ Tap on ‘Change background’ >

⑤ Select ‘Gallery’ >

⑥ Search and select the relevant image >

⑦ Tap the tick ( :heavy_check_mark: ) at the top right to confirm.

⑧ Exit the chatroom >

⑨ Exit the Community >

⑩ Relaunch the Community to see the results.

Note that all the solutions described above are based on restoring the greyed out image with the original image that is still accessible from your device's storage.

If the original image has been deleted, restoring it to your device from a backup can allow restoration on Amino Apps.

If the original image is no longer available due to being permanently deleted (without a backup), the relevant method above cannot be used (with regards to the image in question).

With regards to images that have been deleted without a backup, one possible way around this is to view the image in full by opening the content and saving the image to your device.

You can then follow the appropriate solution to fully restore that image on the content.

Whether you have access to the original image or not, you could always take this as an opportunity to freshen up with a new image.

⨂⨁⨂⨁⨂Privacy issues⨁⨂⨁⨂⨁

The second issue is much more serious.

Communities that are set as Private or Approval Required are usually locked and gated.

Approval Required Communities necessitate a Leader approving a Request before a prospective member can enter and view a Community.

Private Communities usually require an invitation to and are locked.

When someone finds a locked Community on the app through a search or via a link, they are presented with the About page and are unable to proceed except to submit a Request.

When viewing via a web browser, it's usually blurred out with a message to the Community via the app.

This protects the content from being viewed by unauthorised persons.

What & Where

What I've discovered is that layer of security is now lacking.

Any locked Community remains locked on the app but is viewable through an external browser by anyone, even someone without an Amino Apps .

In my investigation, I was able to navigate the feed of a number of randomly selected locked Communities.

I could see what was posted to the feed, including numerous selfies posted by of those Communities.

Both Approval Required and Private Communities were able to be accessed via a web browser, without an Amino Apps .

In all cases, the online indicator was visible.

Impact

This is a serious privacy breach and safety failure.

When a Community is set to be publicly inaccessible, there's an expectation that non- are unable to view the content.

There are valid reasons for a Community to want their content to be limited or private, aside from mature-leaning topics.

For instance, an Amino Community could be set up to allow a study group of students from the same class to discuss homework, other academic projects and issues on campus.

Some of those discussions or content could include sensitive information and keeping it private behind a gated Community is ideal.

The current lapse in security is therefore a privacy breach because it allows unauthorised access to restricted Communities and content that is supposed to be kept private and secure.

It's also a failure in keeping s safe because unauthorised people can access information that in turn, puts Communities and its at risk.

Suppose a small Community had lots of personal information on its Feed because it is a close-knit private friendship group.

Maps giving directions to each other's homes and favourite meeting places is an example of content visible because the group of youth believe that it is only them that can see it.

Hypothetically, if someone outside of that group can now access that Community's Feed, they could easily know that group's movements or even stalk any of them (or worse).

Another possible scenario involves a reverting to spending their time mainly in a locked Community to escape being harassed by a troll who continually creates new s to evade being banned.

The locked Community gives the some peace of mind.

That haven is now at risk of failure because the possibility exists that this troll could easily access the locked Community via a browser and use information gained in a detrimental manner.

While these examples might seem far-fetched, the fact remains that content that is supposed to be gated is now freely available for anyone in the world to possibly access, without an Amino Apps required.

Solutions

Initially, I had not come up with any fixes through ACM, approaching the situation with caution in case of an irreversible error that puts one of my Communities in further jeopardy.

Some careful testing through ACM bore no results so I stopped to be safe.

Since then, I've conducted further investigation and experimenting and found some negative, interesting and positive results.

① Approval Required set Communities remain viewable through the desktop browser version of Amino, via mobile and desktop devices.

For this situation, my recommendation is to avoid posting anything to the Feed, public chatrooms or other public areas, that you don't want to be publicly viewable.

This is the minimum you can do to keep private information safe, at least until it becomes properly gated within a browser environment.

② In further tests, I'm pleased to report that Private set Communities are once again gated, when viewing via a browser.

In viewing a Private Community this way, it was again blurred and overlayed with messaging that it was a Private Community and required an invitation to .

This is certainly a pleasing development that can put some Communities at ease.

③ In ACM, changing a Private Community to Approval Required rendered it visible through a browser.

Upon changing it back to Private, it's visibility via the browser reverted back to gated.

With this in mind, my recommendation is to change from Approval Required to Private until the anomaly is resolved by TA.

Note that not all Approval Required set Communities will be able to do this.

The Community must be Unlisted in order to avoid issues with TA. (They aren't keen on Listed Communities not being searchable, which is what happens when reverting to Private.)

You must also be willing to sacrifice gaining more through searching, in favour of protecting the existing hip and their content.

(You'll still be able to grow your hip through invitations but be mindful of where you place such invites, as many Communities have guidelines that prohibit advertising or promotion. Respect that.)

For those Communities that can apply this solution, it's peace of mind.

④ In extended investigations, in some Communities, I was able to

• scroll the Feed and view content going back a few years, when on the app, the Feed is limited to content posted within the last twelve months of the day of access.

• open content from the Feed to view more of it, such as reading a b full and seeing all of the images, rather than only the cover image and two lines of text.

• watch video content embedded within a blog, complete with audio.

• access content within Shared Folders.

• access member profiles, including complete bio.

Until TA resolves the anomaly, I reiterate that limiting what content is available in public areas and profiles, as well as going Private (if that's possible), are the recommended options.

The image errors discussed at the top of this blog also appear when navigating on a browser.

Profile and content images are greyed out and seem to look worse on a browser than the app.

Interestingly, there's one profile image that appeared greyed out on both the app and browser versions in my initial investigation.

In my latest tests, I was able to see that profile image fully animated on all posts of that but it remains greyed out on the app.

Hopefully that's a sign that a resolution is currently being troubleshooted.

In the meantime, do what you can to protect your Communities as best you can.

📨In late-breaking developments, which I discovered while checking-in prior to posting this blog, another image issue surfaced.

There are two Communities that I'm a member of and one of the other is mutual; that is, they are also a member of those two particular Communities.

The topics of these Communities are totally unrelated but mutual do exist.

This particular posts a lot of off-topic content, when they are active and post the same content across Communities.

While checking-in, I noticed posts from less than 24 hours ago had images fully visible on the Feed in one Community while in the other Community, some of that same content had the images greyed out.

Tapping on the image placeholders (on the greyed out content) produced a black full screen and a platform error message ‘Image not available’ appeared momentarily.

Content on both Communities would have used the same original images so it's interesting that they have different outcomes across Communities.📨

*The testing and solutions offered apply to the Android version of the app. There may be differences with the iOS version.

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This blog and the investigations discussed were conducted and written over a number of days.

It was better to write a piece that was comprehensive and useful than a simple two line rant.

It's hoped that readers found this informative and beneficial.

Feel free to educate your own Communities but this blog is protected by Copyright legislation and cannot be copied in any form whatsoever.

No screenshots were used to avoid violation of call out guidelines or infringing on the privacy or copyright of other Communities and s.

:copyright: Copyright DS☯ 2025