Video Chat App, right in your browser.

OmeLiveChat is for a video call with someone you've never met, not with someone in your contacts. If you want to see your sister, your kids or an old friend abroad, your phone's built-in video calling is the better tool. It already knows your contacts and does the job well.

OmeLiveChat is for the other kind of call: the one with a person you've never met. There's no contact list and no number to dial. You press start and you're matched with one person you don't know yet, so every call is a real video chat with a stranger. It isn't a work meeting tool or a video chat platform for teams either. Most apps that let you video call people you don't know begin with a store download and a phone number check; this is live video chat that begins when the page loads.

Video calling on OmeLiveChat takes four steps: open the site, pick a mode, allow camera and mic, and meet one person. It uses tools every modern browser already ships with, so there's no plug-in. The short version is below; our video chat how-to covers light, sound and the fixes for a black screen or a silent mic.

The right video call app depends on who's on the other end: someone you know, or someone you haven't met. Most good video chat apps are built around a contact list, while video chat sites made for meeting strangers work the other way round. So before you compare features, answer one question: are you calling someone you already know, or hoping to meet someone you haven't met? The two need very different video call apps.

Online video chat in a browser behaves like an app without being one. Nothing is stored on your phone beyond the ordinary data a browser keeps for any site. Nothing keeps running once the tab is closed, so there's no background battery drain. Camera and microphone permission belongs to this one site, not to an app that sits on your phone for months.

You give up very little by making a web video call instead of installing something, and video chatting in a tab feels the same once it starts. Put it on your home screen (steps below) and it opens from its own icon, much like a video calling mobile app, minus the install and the updates. Delete the icon and it's gone.

You pick video, voice or text before each match, so the same video calling and chatting app covers voice and video calls as well as plain typed chat with a stranger. Tired, in bed, or sharing a room? Voice or text keeps the camera out of it.

Typing isn't only a separate mode. In video chats you can send text messages too, handy for spelling a name or sharing the title of the song you just mentioned. Every message in the video call chat box has a translate button next to it.

To get a face call one tap away, add OmeLiveChat to your home screen; the steps for iPhone and Android are below, and the icon opens straight into a face to face chat with someone new. Mid-call you can type, send a gift, follow, switch your camera off or tap next, which ends the call for both of you. The full list of in-call tools lives on the 1-on-1 video chat page; this section is about the home-screen icon and keeping your camera settings under your control.

You can't choose a match by country or ethnicity on OmeLiveChat; every video call is random for everyone. There's no way to set up an asian video chat on purpose here, and it's better to say so up front. A latina video call can't be requested either, because no country or ethnicity filter exists.

What you get instead is a mix you can't plan. Nobody can promise an african video chat on the next tap, and the person after a match in Manila could just as easily be in Bogotá, Caracas or Ohio; you find out when their camera comes on. When a match types in Spanish, Tagalog or Korean, the translate button next to their message turns it into something you can answer, and that's often how a conversation gets past hello. Hoping for Americans in particular? Timing is the only lever, and the chat USA page works it out by time zone.

An online video call here is a live one-to-one call you start from a browser tab, with someone you haven't met yet. No contact list, no phone number, nothing to install: choose video, press start, and the call opens as soon as the queue finds a match. It's free to start, and the whole thing stays inside the page.

That makes it an odd fit next to the usual calling apps, which are built for reaching people you already know. This one does the opposite. Online video calling here means a stranger who's up at the same hour you are, on a phone or a laptop, through whatever browser you already use.