Getting Scanlings on your phone
Scanlings runs in your browser — you don't need an app store. But you can add it to your home screen so it opens like any other app: full screen, its own icon.
Before anything else, link your account to Google. It is the only thing that makes your creatures yours on more than one device, and the only way we can ever give them back. An unlinked account lives on that one phone and nowhere else. We can't recover it, because we have nothing to recover it from.
iPhone and iPad
Read this before you add the icon. On iPhone, a home-screen app has its own separate storage. It cannot see anything you did in Safari. So if you play in Safari first and then add the icon, the app opens as though you'd never played — your creatures aren't gone, they're still in Safari, but the app can't reach them.
So there are two situations, and which one you're in decides everything. Find yours.
1. You haven't played yet
The easy one — nothing ends up in the wrong place, so nothing needs moving.
- Open scanlings.app/play in Safari.
- Don't create a keeper and don't scan anything yet.
- Share button → Add to Home Screen.
- Open Scanlings from the new icon.
- Create your keeper there, and link it to Google when it offers.
2. You've already been playing in Safari
Your keeper and everything you've caught are safe in Safari. This is how you bring them across to the home-screen app.
- Open scanlings.app/play in Safari, where your keeper is.
- Link to Google. This is the step that carries everything over — without it, nothing else here works.
- Share button → Add to Home Screen. (Already added the icon? Skip this — it's the same icon.)
- Open Scanlings from the icon and sign in with the same Google account.
- Your keeper and your creatures come across.
Opened the icon already and it didn't know you? That's expected and nothing is lost — it just hasn't been linked yet. Go back to Safari and start at step 1.
One more reason to link
iPhone clears website data for sites you haven't opened in about a week. The home-screen app is exempt from that; a Safari tab is not. An unlinked account sitting in a Safari tab can be erased by the phone itself.
Android
Simpler: the home-screen app and Chrome share the same storage, so it already knows you.
- Open scanlings.app/play in Chrome.
- Menu → Add to Home screen. (Google Play: coming soon.)
- Play.
Linking to Google is still worth doing — it's what moves your keeper to a new phone.
On a computer
The website reads fine anywhere — news, the boards, the titles. But Scanlings is a scanning game: collecting means pointing a camera at a real barcode, so a phone is what it's built for.
The camera
Scanlings asks for the camera the first time you scan. We use it to read barcodes and nothing else: no photo is saved, nothing is uploaded, and no picture ever leaves your phone.
It isn't asking, or it says it's blocked. Permissions belong to the browser, and the home-screen app counts as its own place — so allowing the camera in Safari doesn't allow it in the app. Check your phone's settings for that site or app and allow the camera there.
No camera at all? Then there's no way to play, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. Scanning a real barcode is the game — there's no typing the digits instead, because that would take the whole point out of it.
"I've lost my creatures"
Almost always it's the iPhone storage split above — check Safari, then check the icon. Otherwise:
- Linked to Google? Sign in with the same account and they come back.
- Not linked? Then they only ever existed on that phone. If it was wiped, the browser data cleared, or the account deleted, they're gone. We're sorry — we hold nothing that can bring them back, which is the same reason we can never hand your account to anyone else.
Playing offline
Scanning and collecting work with no signal at all, and so do battles against the Instructor. The things that need other people — leaderboards, sparring against real teams — wait until you're back online and then catch up on their own.
Names
Your keeper's name is yours permanently. Nobody else can take it, and it is never reused — if you delete your account, the name retires with it and no future player can claim it.
You choose whether your name appears on the leaderboards. Turn it off and you keep your rank, shown anonymously.
Deleting your account
Open Scanlings, tap your player name at the top of the screen, and choose Delete my player. You'll be asked to confirm, and then it's done — no waiting period, nothing to email.
If you no longer have the app, or you can't get into your account, write to hello@scanlings.app and ask. scanlings.app/delete-account explains both routes and what is erased.
It cannot be undone, by you or by us. The account can't be restored, the name can't be claimed again, and nothing about you is kept.
Community
There's a Discord for finds, questions and bug reports. You need to be 16 or older, or have permission from a parent or guardian — the same line as the game itself.
Something's wrong
Tell us on Discord, or email hello@scanlings.app. What helps most: which phone, which browser, and what you saw.