What to do when something doesn’t work

Start here: three quick checks

1. Reload the page. Boring, and it fixes a surprising share of problems.
2. Look at the address. It should start with https://fof.lol. Cameras, microphones, location and motion sensors work only on secure pages, so a saved copy of a page or an odd mirror won’t get them.
3. Close other apps that use the same thing. A video call that is still open holds the camera and microphone, and a navigation app may be busy with GPS.

1Camera or microphone blocked

The browser asks once. If you pressed Block, or closed the question without answering, it will keep quietly refusing until you change your mind. There are two locks, and both must be open:

• The browser. Click the icon to the left of the address (a lock or sliders), find Camera and Microphone, choose Allow and reload. On an iPhone: Settings → Apps → Safari → Camera / Microphone, or aA → Website Settings right in Safari.
• The system. Windows: Settings → Privacy & security → Camera / Microphone, with desktop apps and your browser allowed. macOS: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera / Microphone, with your browser switched on. Android: the browser’s App info → Permissions.

Still black? Close Zoom, Teams or whatever else was on a call: on many computers only one app can hold the camera at a time.

2Compass, level or motion sensors silent

• iPhone and iPad don’t give motion sensors to a page until you allow it with a tap. In ToolBench and SmartBench that’s the button that asks for access. If you refused, close the tab and open the page again; if Safari still won’t ask, remove fof.lol in Safari’s Advanced → Website Data settings and try again.
• A computer usually has no motion sensors at all, so the level and compass can’t work there. ToolBench then opens on Sun and moon, which needs no sensors.
• The compass points the wrong way. Metal and magnets bend the magnetometer: fridges, speakers, laptops, magnetic phone cases, car mounts. Step away from them and move the phone in a figure-eight a few times. Remember that a phone compass shows magnetic north unless you enter the local declination.

3Location not found

Location needs both the browser permission (as for the camera) and the system switch: Location services on the phone, Location in Windows or macOS privacy settings. Indoors GPS may take a minute or give a rough position from Wi-Fi; by a window or outside it is much more accurate. In WhereBench you can also ask for an approximate place by IP, without GPS at all.

4Opened inside Telegram, Instagram or Facebook

A link opened from a messenger or a social app often lands in that app’s own little browser. It looks like the real thing, but it may have no access to the camera, sensors or downloads, and it forgets everything when you close it. Look for Open in browser in its menu (usually ⋯ or ⋮), and everything starts working.

5Private or incognito mode

The tools themselves work in a private window, but anything they remember lives only until you close it: history, saved places, theme and language. Some browsers don’t run the offline copy of the site in private mode, and none of them let you install it as an app from there. If your history keeps disappearing, this is the likely reason.

6An old or unusual browser

The tools use what modern browsers can do, and the site needs a reasonably up-to-date one: update it, or try a different browser. Some features exist only in some browsers, and that’s not a bug on either side:

• NFC works only in Chrome on Android;
• battery details come only from Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers;
• vibration doesn’t exist in Safari on iPhone;
• the QR scanner falls back to a slower reader in browsers that can’t read barcodes themselves, so it works, just a little less briskly.

7Ad blocker or privacy extension

We show no ads, but some tools have to talk to other services, and strict blockers sometimes stop them: the speed test traffic to Cloudflare, IP lookups for the provider and city, map tiles, the server that helps two devices find each other in DropBench and DrawBench, the leak check in PassBench. If one of those parts hangs, pause the blocker for fof.lol or allow those requests. The full list of services is in the Terms of use. Blocking our visit statistics, on the other hand, breaks nothing at all: go ahead.

8The page looks old or stuck

The site keeps a copy of itself for offline use, but with a connection it always asks for the fresh version first. If something still looks out of date or half-broken after an update:

1. reload: pull the page down on a phone, Ctrl + F5 or Cmd + Shift + R on a computer;
2. if it’s installed as an app, close it completely and open it again;
3. as a last resort, clear the site data for fof.lol in the browser settings. Careful: that also deletes your saved history, so save what you need as a file or a link first.

Still broken?

Then it may really be our fault, and we want to know. Write to and tell us which tool, which device and browser, and what you expected to happen. A screenshot helps; a result link helps even more. The kiwi promises to stay away from the fridge while we look.