How Did Ablo Work? Step by Step Guide to the App

Ablo was a chat app that dressed international conversation as air travel. You tapped a button, watched a paper plane cross a globe, read a trivia card about your destination, and landed on one stranger in a random country. Every message was machine-translated both ways, and if you both wanted to, you could move to a video call with live subtitles. Here is how it worked from the moment you opened it.

Tap to Fly: The Core Action

The whole product was built around a single action: tap to fly. You pressed a button, and a paper plane animation crossed a globe on your screen. While it loaded, a card appeared with trivia about your destination: "Hold your seat, we are flying to Kenya." The flight metaphor was everywhere. Errors kept the theme too: "Someone forgot to fuel the plane" and "Flight delayed."

You landed on one stranger in that country. There was no swiping, no browsing profiles, no list of people. Just you and one person in a text chat. If you wanted to move on, you tapped to fly again.

Text Chat with Two-Way Translation

The text chat was the heart of Ablo. Every message you sent was translated into the other person's language, and every message they sent was translated into yours. The original text was always a tap away, which language learners valued. One Chinese reviewer wrote in 2021: "the translation is very accurate, much better than Baidu."

This feature was what made Ablo stand out. You could talk to someone from a country where you shared no common language, and it worked. An English reviewer in 2021 called Ablo "like a Travel Agency which don't charge anything."

The Optional Video Call with Subtitles

After exchanging about 20 messages, a video call button appeared. Tapping it sent a request, and if the other person accepted, you moved to a video call with live subtitles. The subtitles translated what each person said in real time.

This feature was removed in early 2022, which caused the biggest backlash in the app's history. One reviewer said: "it was the only app in the world that did this." After the removal, many users called what was left "just another Omegle."

Adding Friends and Earning Miles

If you wanted to keep talking to someone, you could add them as a friend. From mid-2020, reconnecting with a friend required sending a paid gift. This pushed many users to swap WhatsApp and Instagram handles in their first message instead.

Miles were earned by using the app. They unlocked things like hosting a Live stream. Miles were never sold, and nothing you needed to talk to someone cost money.

Coins and the Paywall

Coins were a separate currency. You could earn a few from a daily check-in (removed in July 2021) or buy them. Coins let you:

• Choose a continent or gender for your next flight
• Buy gifts for other users
• Reconnect with a friend
• Buy extra flights beyond the daily free limit

The daily free flight limit appeared in September 2019 and was capped at 10 flights a day by late May 2020. Coin prices roughly tripled during the March-April 2020 lockdowns. Users in Turkey, Brazil and Latin America complained that euro pricing felt unfair.

The Surfaces You Could Visit

Over time, Ablo added more ways to interact:

• A friends list for people you added
• Gifts you could send
• "Super 30" and later "Super 6" face-frame mini-games on video calls
• A TikTok-style 15-second video feed (late 2020)
• Live streaming with guests, battles and top-fan ranks (2021)
• Followers and "One World Radio" (later removed)
• A dark mode that only recoloured the profile screen and cost coins (May 2021)

What Ablo Never Had

Despite years of requests, Ablo never added:

• Picking a specific country to visit
• Deleting or unsending a message (archive only)
• Online status
• Voice messages
• Search by username
• A working web client (there was one early on, but it was removed)

The Flight-Themed Error Messages

The air travel theme extended to errors. When something went wrong, users saw messages like "Someone forgot to fuel the plane" or "Flight delayed." It was a small touch that many reviewers mentioned fondly. A French reviewer in 2020 wrote: "j'ai voyagé sans bouger de chez moi" (I travelled without leaving home).

The Shutdown and After

On 30 September 2022, Ablo shut down and pointed users to Azar. No data export was offered. Friends of three years were lost because Ablo was the only channel they shared. Users rejected Azar almost unanimously. One Turkish reviewer wrote: "biz aileydik" (we were a family).

The demand never died. Grief reviews ran from 2022 into August 2026. A Spanish reviewer wrote in December 2022: "La extraño" (I miss it), which became the most-upvoted line in the post-shutdown reviews with over 1,140 helpful votes.

How Olu Compares

Olu works in a browser with nothing to install. You tap to take off and fly to a random country, just like Ablo. Chat is one-to-one text only, with no video or voice calls. Messages are translated both ways, with the original a tap away. Miles are earned and never bought, and nothing you need to talk to someone costs money. Friends and reconnecting are free. If nobody from a country is online, you may meet an AI local, which is always labelled as AI.

For more on what made Ablo special and what went wrong, read our analysis of Ablo reviews and the full timeline of changes.