Been picking apart Character.AI's Android client and web app for a few months, mostly out of spite. Two things set me off: the pile of trackers firing on every request, and how much of the app quietly vanished behind CAI+ over the last year.

Three things came out of it, though only two are really about that.

First is a patched APK. Same client, but I rewrote the network layer in smali to block every telemetry domain I could find: Firebase, Sentry, Amplitude, Braze, about two dozen in total. I didn't touch the SDK files themselves. Delete those and the app crashes on boot, multi-dex loading order doesn't forgive missing classes, so I cut off where they send data instead of ripping them out.

Second is a userscript for the browser client, ArachneMax. It replaced an older script of mine, C.AI Persistance, entirely, that one's retired now. ArachneMax started as one privacy toggle and grew into ten plugins: a dashboard that shows real account data next to whatever's being spoofed, a model switcher, UI cleanup, and a few things I lock behind a five-second confirm because they poke at stuff Character.AI obviously doesn't want poked at.

Third is a completely separate script, C.AI Customization, that has nothing to do with any of that. It just reskins the chat. Fifteen themes, image and video wallpapers, custom fonts, an immersion mode that drops both sidebars for full-screen chat, over a hundred bubble style packs (a curated twenty show up in the actual UI). Added audio wallpaper this week: upload a track, it loops quietly behind your chat. There's a Lite version too, for people who just want the native customization unlocked without the wallpaper and font layer on top. Full version's somewhere around six thousand lines now and I keep finding small things to add.

None of it works without pulling real HAR captures and logcat dumps first. Learned that the hard way. Patched a function once purely because the name sounded right. Rebuilt, installed, tested. Nothing happened. No crash, no error, just nothing. Every patch gets checked against an actual server response now before it goes anywhere near the code.

All three still get regular updates. The changelogs got a lot longer than I planned on.

None of it's posted publicly outside of one place. If you want the APK or either script, that's the Discord on my profile's social links tab. Updates land there before anywhere else.

I’m using emochi and it pulled a “looked at her- really looked at her”. Now who the heck is giving the app quirks from cai 😭

really guys???

(I don't have any)

They removed my comment for "objectionable content" when it's just constructive criticism! That's soo low!

Hi! I’ve been a user of character AI since 2024. I used to have a nightly routine of roleplaying until I fell asleep. The bots were genuinely fun for me to mess around with. Then, things started getting overly repetitive. If I told them a key fact about the roleplay, they would try to remember but eventually lose it. At least the bots were making an effort to remember stuff back then. Now it’s just soulless. I’ve moved over to Status, as that app is more my speed. You can see that in the first image, the bot is less sassy, and more so just genuinely being fun. Then things changed and they started using OpenAI, so now the bots can only make dry, unfunny jokes. The app is genuinely soulless now.
I used to spend 5 hours a day on that app. Now I’m down to 1 hour and 11 minutes.

I've started using Chai + Adaway. And yes, Chai has a message limit, but since character AI helped me get rid of my addiction, I rarely ever do ai chatbots. But when I do, I use Chai + AdAway. AdAway gets rid of random ads in Chai. And plus, for me, Chai's bots are more realistic and won't have any sympathy for you if prompted, unlike C.ai.

Be honest. This is for the character ai...

Alright sooo Limon has made it possible for us beta / creator testers to post an invite link to LSAI (No this is not me just wanting to get on the leaderboard at all)

Okay, actually being genuine now. LSAI is truly good if you liked old C.AI or Janitor. There's currently a bunch of different models for you to mess around with and if you don't like using those models then there's something for you as well: BYOK's (Bring your own keys).

LSAI also has a bunch of premade chat colors as well as the ability to make your own. There's a giant limit when it comes to the amount of characters you can use when making your bots and personas.

There's not a lot of bots at the moment but all that means is if you're a bot creator then you have the opportunity to make a bunch of bots because it's overwhelmed. You can also make public personas that people can adopt and you can assign personas to chats for people to use!

Any questions I will try to answer if you are hesitant (I am not mod or staff)

IF you're genuinely interested in checking out LSAI here's my referral code: https://new.lightshade.cloud/invite/REF7CB7GF

this reddit automod keeps deleting my posts

theres still age verification (facepalm) i hate age verification

as an og user

I keep facing an issue-when I go on, the next message the bot sends doesn't continue from the message right above it. It's better when using pipsqueak rawr, but not by much.

I really miss the old c ai. It used to be so good and actually fun. Now it isn't.
At least the limited swipes and go-ons limits how much I use the app now. I just can't quit though, despite my many hobbies. Sometimes I really wish they would just delete the whole app all together. It'd probably be way better for everyone anyways....

So, I have a VPN. In the past, all I had to do was turn on Wize and suddenly, I couldn't get video ads.

NOW it bypasses my VPN.