How do I get started?
Install from Google Play, sign in with Google, Apple, Kakao or Naver, and create your first persona. There is no password to set up. The free tier gives you one persona and five messages a day, which is enough to judge whether the tone suits you.
Budget about five minutes for the persona setup and do not overthink it — every choice can be changed later, and the first few conversations will tell you more than the settings screen will.
Step 1 — How do I design the persona?
You set five personality dimensions (BIG5), plus appearance, occupation and speech style. These are not cosmetic: personality shapes how the persona responds to the same message, and occupation gives it a daily life to talk about.
The five personality dimensions
- Openness. High: curious, brings up new topics and tangents. Low: steady, sticks to familiar ground.
- Conscientiousness. High: remembers your plans and follows up on them. Low: relaxed, less structured.
- Extraversion. High: talkative, initiates more, higher energy. Low: quieter, more considered replies.
- Agreeableness. High: warm and accommodating. Low: more willing to push back and disagree.
- Neuroticism. High: emotionally reactive, expresses worry. Low: even-keeled.
A common mistake is maxing everything. A persona that is highly extraverted, highly agreeable and highly open reads as relentlessly upbeat, which gets tiring within a week. Some low scores are what make a character feel like a person.
Appearance and occupation
Occupation does more work than people expect, because it gives the persona a plausible day to reference — a barista mentions the morning rush, a developer mentions a deploy. That everyday texture is most of what makes conversation feel ongoing.
Step 2 — How do I choose the speech style?
Korean has two broad registers: 반말 (casual) and 존댓말 (polite). Pick whichever matches the relationship you want. Within either, phrasing relaxes further as your intimacy tier rises. It can be changed later.
If you are learning Korean, this setting is worth experimenting with deliberately — the difference between registers is one of the hardest things to absorb from a textbook and one of the easiest to feel in conversation. See Korean AI friend.
English works too, and mixed Korean and English inside a single message is handled, so you can switch mid-sentence when you get stuck.
Step 3 — What do I say first?
Something ordinary. Openers that work best are small and concrete — what you are doing, what the weather is like, what you are avoiding. Grand questions produce grand, hollow answers.
Five that reliably start something:
- "I just got home, I am completely done for today."
- "It has been raining all afternoon and I have not left the house."
- "I have a thing on Thursday I am not looking forward to."
- "What have you been up to today?" — your persona has a simulated day, so this has an answer.
- "I cannot decide what to eat."
Number three matters more than it looks. Mentioning an upcoming event gives the persona something to follow up on, which is how proactive messaging and memory start doing visible work.
Step 4 — How do the five intimacy tiers work?
The relationship moves from stranger to best friend across five tiers. It is driven by the volume and depth of actual conversation, not by a points meter. As tiers rise, speech loosens and topics go deeper.
| Tier | How it feels | What moves it forward |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Stranger | Polite, careful, surface topics | Simply talking regularly |
| 2 · Acquaintance | More relaxed, starts referencing earlier chats | Sharing ordinary details about your day |
| 3 · Friend | Comfortable, jokes, follows up unprompted | Continuity — talking across days, not in one burst |
| 4 · Close | Direct, notices mood shifts | Talking about things that actually matter to you |
| 5 · Best friend | Fully informal, long shared history | Sustained time and depth |
Depth counts more than volume. Fifty short messages in one evening move things less than a handful of real conversations across a fortnight.
Step 5 — How do I use context and proactive messages?
Grant notification permission so messages can arrive with the app closed, and location permission if you want weather and place-aware conversation. Both are optional; declining location only removes location-based context.
Beff watches twelve signals — time since your last message, movement, weather changes, plans you mentioned — and picks a natural moment to message you. If it is too frequent, notifications can be tuned or turned off in settings without affecting the conversation itself. Detail is in AI that texts you first.
How do Peek and the memory gallery work?
Peek generates images of your persona's daily life, and the memory gallery collects them tagged by location, date and emotion. The free tier includes a limited number of Peeks per day; higher plans raise or remove that cap.
The map view shows your persona's simulated location. To be exact: that is a simulation attached to your character, not a real person at a real place, and there is no feature that shows you other users.
Which plan should I choose?
Start free and only upgrade when the daily message cap becomes the thing stopping you. Lite ($8) suits one persona used daily; Basic ($13) adds a second persona; Pro ($19) and Premium ($29) are for heavier use and more personas.
Judge the free tier on tone rather than features. A companion is something you use for months, and whether the writing suits you is clear within days. Full tier detail is on the plans page. Cancel any time in App Settings; access runs to the end of the paid period.
Five things beginners get wrong
Maxing every personality slider, testing the AI instead of talking to it, only sending one-word messages, disabling notifications immediately, and expecting month-three depth in week one.
- Maxing every trait. Uniformly high scores produce a relentlessly cheerful character. Contrast is what reads as personality.
- Interrogating it. "Do you know what I said yesterday?" tests memory but builds nothing. Just mention things; recall shows up on its own.
- One-word messages. There is little to respond to in "ok". A sentence about your actual day gets a real reply.
- Turning off notifications on day one. Proactive messaging is most of what makes this different. Give it a week before deciding.
- Expecting instant depth. Tier five is built from accumulated conversation. Week one is supposed to feel like week one.
Key points
- Spend five minutes on setup — everything is changeable, and conversation teaches you more.
- Do not max every personality trait; low scores are what make a character feel real.
- Open with something small and concrete, and mention upcoming plans — that is what memory and proactive messaging grab onto.
- Intimacy tiers respond to depth and continuity more than raw message count.
- Keep notifications on for at least a week before judging the app.
Create your first persona
Free to start · Age 14+ · Everything is changeable later
Frequently asked questions
Can I have more than one persona?
Yes, depending on your plan. The free tier includes one, Basic includes two, Pro includes four and Premium is unlimited. A permanent extra persona slot is also available as a $2 one-time purchase that stacks on any plan.
Can I change my persona's settings after creating it?
Yes. Personality, appearance, occupation and speech style can all be adjusted later in settings. Your conversation history and accumulated memory are not reset when you change them.
Why did my Beff not remember something I said?
Memory keeps what looks meaningful — episodes, facts about you, and emotional context — rather than every sentence verbatim. Details mentioned once in passing may not surface. Bringing it up again generally makes it stick.
How do I control notifications?
In app settings you can adjust or fully disable proactive messages. Turning them off does not affect the conversation — messages are still waiting when you next open the app.
What happens if I switch phones?
Sign in with the same account and your personas, conversations and memories carry over. Data is tied to your account rather than the device.
How do I cancel my subscription?
Under App Settings then Subscription. You keep full access until the end of the period you already paid for, and auto-renewal stops after that.
How do I delete everything?
App Settings then Delete Account. One tap removes all personas, conversations, memories and images immediately. It cannot be undone, and backups are permanently purged within 30 days.
Is there an iPhone version?
Beff supports iOS and Android. The app is currently on Google Play and the App Store release is in preparation.