Download APK Truth Social New Features, Settings Overview & Honest Review

I opened Truth Social on a Tuesday morning with coffee going cold beside me, and I gave it the same test I give every social app: could I post something, find people worth following, and leave again in five minutes without feeling dragged along? The first screen answered that quickly. The layout is plain, the buttons sit where your thumb expects them, and the feed loads as a simple column of posts rather than a maze of tabs. That plainness is the whole pitch, and after a month of checking in most days, I have a clear sense of where it works, where it still feels thin, and which of the newer additions actually change the daily routine.

This review covers what is genuinely new, walks through the settings screen by screen, and gives an honest verdict for different kinds of users. I tested the app on an ordinary Android phone on home Wi-Fi and on mobile data, in short morning sessions and longer weekend scrolls. If you already use the app, the settings section will probably save you the most time. If you are deciding whether to try it, the comparison and the pros and cons will do the heavy lifting.

What is new in Truth Social in 2025 and 2026

Truth Social has changed more in the last year than in its first two, and most of the change sits in two places: search and video. The app that launched in early 2022 as a fairly simple place to post short updates now carries an AI-powered search tool, a streaming service, group chats, and direct messages. None of this turns it into a different app. The home feed still looks much like it did at launch. But the newer layers matter if you post often, follow news closely, or watch video on your phone, so they are worth a proper look before you judge the app on its first screen alone.

Truth Search AI and the Perplexity-powered search

The biggest single addition is Truth Search AI, which arrived in mid-2025 and is powered by Perplexity. Tap the search icon and you now get two kinds of results: posts from inside Truth Social, and a short AI-written answer drawn from the wider web, with links to the pages it used. I tried it on breaking news, on a local election result, and on a deliberately awkward question about a film release date, and the answers were short, sourced, and usually right on the facts that could be checked. The catch is the one every AI search tool shares: the answer reads with more confidence than it deserves when a story is still moving, so I treat it as a starting point and tap through to at least one source before I repeat anything.

How Truth Search AI changes a normal search

Before this change, search in Truth Social mostly found accounts and hashtags. Now a plain question gets a plain answer at the top of the results, and the social results sit underneath. In practice that means I search the app the way I search the web, and I stay inside the app for one more step of the journey. It also means the quality of the answer depends on the question: names, dates, and scores come back cleanly, while opinion-heavy questions return a bland summary that tells you little. Use it for facts, not for judgment, and it earns its place.

Truth+ streaming and live channels

Truth+ is the streaming side of the service, and it grew through 2024 and 2025 into a real part of the app rather than a side project. It carries live news channels and on-demand video, and the newer versions of the app put video front and centre on a dedicated tab. The free tier gives you a slice of the channels, while the paid Truth+ plan opens the full set. I watched a live news broadcast on Wi-Fi and then again on a patchy mobile connection, and the stream held up well on Wi-Fi but dropped to a softer picture on weak data, which is normal for any video app. The Truth+ streaming catalogue leans heavily toward news and commentary, so it suits people who already follow that kind of programming and will feel thin if you want films or sport.

What Truth+ actually adds to a free account

A free account still gets the core social app, posting, following, and a taste of the video channels. Paying for Truth+ mainly buys the wider channel list, an ad-free feel in the video section, and access to the premium live streams. My advice is to live with the free tier for a week first. If you open the video tab every day, the paid tier makes sense. If you open it twice and forget it, keep your money. The price is shown inside the app at sign-up, so check the current plan there rather than trusting a price quoted in an old article.

Groups, direct messages and the quieter feed changes

Groups arrived as a slower, quieter addition, and they are the feature I ended up using more than I expected. A group is a small shared space around a topic, with its own feed and its own members, and it feels closer to an old forum thread than to a public timeline. Direct messages are now a normal part of the app too, with one-to-one chats and small group chats, and they work the way you would expect: send, read, reply, mute. The feed itself gained a Following view that shows only the accounts you chose, which is the single best antidote to a noisy home timeline. If your feed feels random, switch to Following for a week and see how much calmer the app becomes.

Truth Social settings overview: the screens that matter most

Truth Social keeps its settings in one place, reached from your profile picture, and the menu is shorter than the one you will find in bigger social apps. That is a strength: you can read every option in a few minutes. The screens that matter are notifications, privacy and safety, content preferences, and account. Everything else is display polish. I went through each screen on day one, changed a handful of things, and then barely touched them again, which is exactly how settings should work.

Notification settings that keep the app quiet

Notifications are the first screen to visit. Truth Social lets you switch off likes, ReTruths, follows, and mentions separately, so you can keep the alerts that matter and silence the rest. I kept mentions and direct messages on, and turned off likes and new followers, and the app went from buzzing every hour to speaking up only when someone actually talked to me. There is also a quiet-hours style habit worth building by hand: turn off push notifications entirely at night from your phone system settings, and let the in-app badge do the work in the morning. A social app that only pings you when a real person replies is a calmer app.

Privacy, blocks, mutes and who can reply

The privacy screen holds the controls that shape who can reach you. You can block an account, mute an account, mute a word or phrase, and limit who can reply to your posts. Muted words are the most underused tool in the app: add a word or a hashtag you are tired of, and posts carrying it fade out of your feed. Blocking is blunt and final, muting is gentle and reversible, and knowing the difference saves you from cutting off people you only wanted a break from. The muted words list is also where you can clean up a feed that has drifted toward one topic, one argument, or one endless news cycle.

A five-minute privacy tidy for a new account

Open settings, then privacy, and do four things: set who can reply to your posts, add three muted words for topics you never want to see, turn on two-factor authentication from the account screen, and check which apps or sessions are signed in. That is five minutes of work, and it is the best five minutes you will spend in the app. Check the same screens once a month afterwards, because a tidy account stays tidy only if someone keeps an eye on it.

How the Truth Social feed works day to day

The home feed mixes posts from accounts you follow with suggested posts, and the balance between the two decides whether the app feels personal or noisy. The Following tab fixes that balance by showing only your choices. A Truth, the app’s name for a post, is a short text update with an optional photo, video, or link, and the character limit sits around 500 characters, which keeps posts short and readable. Replies stack underneath in a thread, ReTruths reshare a post to your own followers, and likes are a quiet nod rather than a public ranking. After three weeks I found my rhythm: check Following in the morning, glance at the main feed at lunch, post once or twice a day, and leave it alone in the evening.

Truths, ReTruths and replies in practice

Posting is deliberately simple. Tap the compose button, write, add a photo or a link if you have one, and post. There is no scheduling tool built in, no thread composer that splits a long thought into numbered posts, and no draft folder worth the name, so longer thoughts need to be written elsewhere and pasted in. Replies are where the real conversation happens, and the reply controls matter: limiting replies to people you follow cuts the noise on a popular post dramatically. ReTruths are the app’s share button, and they carry the original post with your name attached, which makes them a simple way to pass along something good without adding a comment of your own.

Truth Social features list: what you actually get

Strip away the branding and Truth Social is a compact set of tools: short posts, replies, reshares, likes, follows, search, groups, direct messages, video, and live streaming. The table below lines up the free account against the paid Truth+ plan, so you can see at a glance which features sit behind the paywall and which are open to everyone.

The 500-character Truths keep the writing tight, and that limit shapes the whole culture of the app: posts read like headlines and reactions rather than essays. Video uploads handle short clips well and longer uploads take their time, so I keep videos under a couple of minutes when I post from mobile data. Live streaming works from the app for accounts that have access, and the viewer side is simple: tap, watch, comment, leave. None of this is ground-breaking on its own. The package is the point: a small, plain social app with a video service attached, rather than a video service pretending to be a social app.

Posting, video and live video

Video is where the app has grown the most. The video tab gathers clips and live channels in one place, and the player supports the basics: play, pause, scrub, full screen, and a comment thread beside the stream. I found short clips load fast and play smoothly on a mid-range phone, while live streams ask more of your connection and your battery, so I watch live on Wi-Fi when I can. Posting a video from the camera roll takes a few taps, and the app compresses the file before upload, which keeps the wait short but softens the picture a little. If video quality matters to you, upload on Wi-Fi and keep the original file on your phone.

Truth Social pros and cons after a month of daily use

A month of short daily sessions gives a fair picture, and the picture is mixed in an honest way. The app is at its best when you treat it as a small, plain tool for following people and posting short updates. It is at its weakest when you ask it to be everything a bigger social network is. Here is the balance as I found it, with no varnish on either side.

Pros:

• Simple, calm layout: the main actions stay visible, the feed reads cleanly, and a new user can post within minutes of signing up.
• Truth Search AI gives quick, sourced answers to factual questions without leaving the app.
• Following feed and muted words give you real control over what fills your timeline.
• Groups and direct messages add quieter spaces for real conversation away from the public feed.
• Truth+ streaming adds live news channels for people who already watch that kind of programming.

Cons:

• Smaller community: fewer accounts, fewer replies, and less variety than the biggest social networks, so niche interests can feel thin.
• No built-in post scheduling, no thread composer, and no proper draft folder for longer writing.
• Video quality and live streaming lean on a good connection; on weak mobile data the picture softens fast.
• Truth+ is an extra cost for a channel list that leans heavily toward one kind of programming.

Truth Social vs X and Tumblr: a short comparison

Most people choosing Truth Social are really choosing between three different flavours of social app. X is the loudest and largest of the three, with the widest range of voices and the fastest news cycle. Tumblr is the most relaxed, built around blogs, art, and long-running fandoms rather than breaking news. Truth Social sits between them in tone: smaller and calmer than X, more news-driven than Tumblr. The table below lines them up on the things that decide daily use, and the honest answer is that none of them wins for everyone.

If you enjoy posting updates and following public voices, Tumblr is a natural next app to try when you want a slower, more visual kind of social app. And if you want the biggest and fastest timeline in the same family, X covers that need neatly as a second option. Curious readers may also enjoy Viber is worth a look as well because it shares the same easy-going spirit, though it leans more toward messaging than public posting. My verdict per use case: pick Truth Social for a calm daily routine and news video, X for the widest conversation, and Tumblr for creative communities and long-form posts.

Truth Social common problems and fixes

Most trouble I met in a month was small and fixable, and the fixes are the same ones that work on almost any social app. Work through them in order, one at a time, and check after each step instead of changing five things at once and guessing which one helped.

Login trouble and verification delays

If sign-in fails, check the email address first, then the password, then whether the verification email landed in spam. A fresh install sometimes needs a second try at the verification step, and waiting a few minutes before requesting a new code beats hammering the button five times. If two-factor authentication is on and the code never arrives, use a backup code if you saved one, or the recovery option on the sign-in screen. Never share a verification code with anyone who asks for it in a message, because the real app will never ask.

Feed not loading and notification glitches

A feed that will not refresh is usually a connection problem, not an app problem. Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data and see which one works, then close the app fully and reopen it. If notifications arrive late or not at all, check the phone system settings first: battery saving modes on some Android phones pause background apps, and that pause looks exactly like a broken notification system. Clear the app cache from the phone settings as a next step, and reinstall only as a last resort, after checking that your posts and follows are tied to your account rather than to the phone itself.

Truth Social FAQ

Is Truth Social free to use?

Yes, the core social app is free: posting, following, replies, groups, and direct messages cost nothing. Truth+ is a separate paid plan that opens the full live channel list and removes ads from the video section. You can use the app for weeks on the free tier before deciding whether the paid channels are worth it, and the free tier is not a trial that expires.

How do I turn off notifications I do not want?

Open your profile, go to settings, then notifications, and switch off each type you do not need, such as likes or new followers, while keeping mentions and direct messages on. If the app still buzzes at night, turn off push notifications in your phone system settings as well, because the in-app switches and the system switches work as two separate layers.

Can I use Truth Social without posting anything?

Yes, and plenty of people do. You can follow accounts, read the Following feed, watch Truth+ video, and join groups without ever posting a Truth. Reading first for a week is a sensible way to learn the tone of the app before you add your own voice to it, and the app works perfectly well as a read-only tool.

How do I delete my Truth Social account?

Account deletion lives in the account section of settings, and it usually involves confirming your password and then a short waiting period before the account is removed for good. Download any posts or data you want to keep first, because deletion is hard to reverse, and sign out of other devices once you have started the process so nothing keeps the session alive.

Final verdict: who Truth Social suits best and where to get it

Truth Social suits people who want a plain, calm place to post short updates, follow public voices, and catch live news video without wading through a crowded timeline. It suits readers more than writers at first, and it suits patient users who will set up muted words and the Following feed rather than accepting the default timeline as it comes. It suits less well anyone who needs a huge community, a scheduling tool, or a wide range of video beyond news and commentary. The newer additions, Truth Search AI and Truth+, are real improvements rather than decoration, and they push the app from a simple posting tool toward a small media service. That said, the core experience is still the simple feed, and if you like the feed, the rest is a bonus.

My advice is simple: install it, spend five minutes on the privacy tidy, live on the Following feed for a week, and try one Truth Search AI question a day. At the end of that week you will know whether it earns a place on your home screen. When you are ready, Click here to download the Truth Social app. A similar app is worth a quick look too: Click here to download the Tumblr app. For a second option, Click here to download the X app.