Ember began in the browser on purpose. You scan the QR on the pub table, you are in the room in seconds, and you can wave at someone before your crisps arrive. That route is not going anywhere.
But there is now a better home for every night after your first: the Ember app is on the App Store and Google Play. Same rooms, same waves, same rules. What changes is everything around them: how fast you get in, and whether a wave finds you while your phone sits in your pocket.
Here is what the app changes, what it does not, and why your second Ember night should start from your Home Screen.
Now on the App Store and Google Play
Ember by PubCrush is on both stores, free, for iPhone and Android:
Everything that makes Ember, Ember is unchanged. Rooms open at 5pm and every night is wiped by morning. You have to actually be at the venue to join its room. A one-sided wave stays invisible, a mutual wave is a match, and at an Ember venue your first match of the night earns a match reward you claim together at the bar. Free for guests, 18 and over only. If all of that is new to you, start with how an Ember night works.
The browser got you in the door
We built the browser version first for one reason: the moment you hear about Ember is usually the moment you are already sitting in a pub. Asking you to install an app right then is friction at the worst possible time. A QR code and a browser tab mean you can be in the room before the conversation moves on.
That logic still holds, so the browser version stays. Nothing is moving behind a download wall.
The app exists for a different moment: every night after the first. Once you know you like Ember, the browser tab starts to show its limits.
Why the app beats the browser tab
One tap at the door
In the browser, coming back to Ember means finding the tab, or the QR, or typing the address, and hoping you are still signed in. Phone browsers have a habit of forgetting you at the worst moment. The app removes all of that. Set your profile up once and it remembers you. Walk into an Ember pub, tap the icon, and you are in the room while your mates are still squinting at the table card.
A wave never goes unseen
This is the big one. Ember is time-limited by design: the room closes when the pub does, and by morning the night is gone. If someone waves at you at nine and you only spot it when you idly reopen a browser tab an hour and a half later, most of the night is already gone, and maybe the person too.
The app fixes this with notifications that simply work. A wave back, a match, a few lines from your match trying to find you across a busy room: all of it reaches you with the phone face down on the table or deep in a coat pocket.
The browser genuinely cannot keep up here, especially on iPhone. Apple only lets a website send push notifications after you have added that site to your Home Screen as a web app and opened it from there, as Apple's WebKit team explains. Almost nobody ever does that. The app skips the workaround entirely, and it will not pester you either: Ember waits to ask for notification permission until you join your first room, when a wave actually has something to announce.
Built for how phones are actually used
This is not an Ember quirk. Research firms have repeatedly found that people spend almost 90 percent of their mobile time inside apps rather than the browser, a figure reported independently by comScore and Nielsen. The browser is where you look things up. Apps are where you live. Ember on your Home Screen sits where your thumb already goes on a night out, not three taps deep in a browser you last opened on Tuesday.
Small enough for pub wifi
If the word "app" makes you picture a 300 MB download on one bar of signal, relax. Ember on iOS weighs in around 6.6 MB, roughly the size of a couple of photos in your camera roll. It installs in seconds on pub wifi and it will never be the reason your storage is full.
The night stays private either way
Worth saying plainly: choosing the app changes nothing about your data. Waves, matches and who was in the room are wiped within a day of the room closing, exactly as in the browser. Your account and profile stay until you delete them. The app delivers the same short-lived night, only more reliably. The FAQ has the full detail.
So which one should you use?
A simple rule of thumb:
- First time, standing in a pub, someone has just shown you a QR code: use the browser. You will be in the room in under a minute.
- Every night after that: use the app. One tap at the door, and no wave slips past you.
Quick questions
Do I have to download the app now?
No. The browser version works and it stays. The app is the better experience, not a requirement.
Is the app free?
Yes. Ember is free for guests on both stores, with no paywall and no upgrade screen. You just need to be 18 or over and actually at the venue.
Will the QR codes on tables stop working?
No. The table QR remains a way into the room. The app simply adds a faster route for the nights when you already know where you are heading.
Ready when you are: get Ember on the App Store or on Google Play, or find an open night near you and try it from the browser first. Either way the room is the same, and so are the people in it.