Pinning keeps the people who motivate you on your screen — and it's one of StudyStream's most-loved (and most-asked-about) features. Here's how it all works.
Pinning someone
- On the web: open a user's tile menu and choose "Pin" (choose "Unpin" to remove).
- On the mobile app: double-tap a user's tile to pin them; your pinned users live in the Pinned view (swipe right).
How many people you can pin depends on your plan: 4 on Free, 20 on Basic, 40 on Premium — see: Plans and daily focus room time limits.
A few rules that surprise people:
- Leaving a focus room resets your pins (and encouragements) for that session.
- Premium users can bring recently lost pins back with "Acquire recently lost pins" in the room menu (usable once every few minutes).
- Blocking someone removes any pins between you automatically, in both directions.
Pin reasons
When you pin someone (or someone pins you), a short reason can be attached — "They're really focused", and so on.
- Some reasons are anonymous by design. The more personal options aren't shown with a name attached, no matter your plan — so no, there's no way to find out who left one of those.
- A "mutual pin" popup appears when you and another user pin each other. If you turned it off and want it back: open your own tile's "Video settings" in the room and disable "Hide mutual pin notification".
Your pin summary and who pinned you
- Pin summary (the chart): appears once you've received at least 10 pin reasons in the selected time period. If you see "Not enough responses yet to show pin summary", try a longer time frame — or collect a few more pins.
- Who pinned you and why (the breakdown): a Premium feature. It shows who left most reasons over the last 30 days — except the anonymous-by-design ones, which stay anonymous for everyone.
- Who is pinning me right now? In the room, the participant list has a "Pinning Me" tab with Now / Today / Yesterday views — full lists are a Premium feature. Free users see the counts, and can occasionally use an earned reward ("Use one of your rewards to reveal") to unlock the Now list once.
What is pin-for-pin (P4P)?
Pin-for-pin automatically pins back the people who pin you. Users who have it on show a "P4P" badge on their tile when you hover — pin them, and they'll pin you back (as long as they have free pin slots).
- Turn it on (Premium) in the room: Settings → Pin settings → "Enable pin-for-pin". You can choose which groups it auto-pins back: pre-university students, university students, professionals.
- Looking for people open to connecting? The room's filters can show only users with "Has P4P on" and "Has pin slots remaining".
Favorites: your shortlist (with mobile notifications)
Favorites are your private shortlist of people you like studying with — mark anyone with the star in the participant list.
- Get notified when they show up: the bell next to a favorite sends you a mobile notification the first time they turn their camera on each day (you'll need the mobile app installed). You can switch notifications on/off for all favorites at once in the "Manage favorites" list.
- Order matters: drag favorites into your preferred order in "Manage favorites". Premium users can then "Sort by favorites" (pinned tiles follow your favorites order), "Auto-pin favorites" (pins them automatically when you join — web only), and "Auto sort pinned favorites".
- How many favorites you can have depends on your plan.
Nobody is notified when you favorite them — it's visible only to you.
Favorites vs. following vs. pinning — what's the difference?
Three separate things, easy to mix up:
- Pinning — keeps someone's tile on your screen in the current room session. Resets when you leave.
- Favorites — your private, permanent shortlist: notifications when they come online, and control over how your pins get ordered.
- Following — the social connection (the "Follow" button on someone's profile). The participant list's Following tab shows which people you follow are in the room, and profiles show "Follows you" / "Mutual follow".
Encouragements, waves and reactions
- Encourage (thumbs-up) and wave (👋) at people from their tile or the participant list. A wave is simply a friendlier flavor of encouragement — a quick hello rather than a "keep going" — and the two work exactly the same way: they share one daily allowance that depends on your plan, with a short per-person cooldown so they can't be spammed.
- On the mobile app (iOS & Android): the tile menu has a single "Send encouragement" option — waving is currently web-only.
- When someone encourages you, it appears in the encouragements tray (bottom of the room) — you can encourage back one by one or "React to all".
- Emoji reactions: react to anyone's tile message with any emoji — free for everyone.
- Want peace and quiet? Room Settings → Troubleshooting → "Disable encouragements" turns incoming ones off; there's a matching "Disable pinning" if you don't want to be pinned at all.
What is greeting mode?
Regulars who've received enough pins can activate greeting mode (the hand icon in the room's action bar, camera on required): it automatically welcomes new users with an encouragement and a friendly reaction. A nice way to pay the warm welcome forward.