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Settings Reference

Complete reference for every setting in MeshMapper, organized by section.

Warning

Some settings are locked while auto-ping is running. A yellow banner appears at the top of the Settings screen when this is the case. Stop auto-ping to change locked settings.

General

Theme

  • Toggle between Dark mode (default) and Light mode
  • Dark mode recommended for wardriving at night to reduce glare

Background Location (Mobile only)

  • Prompts for "Always" location permission for continuous GPS tracking when the app is backgrounded
  • Android: Background operation uses a foreground service. Enabling this grants "Always" location permission for improved GPS consistency.
  • iOS: Required for reliable background wardriving. Without it, iOS may throttle or stop GPS updates when the app is not in the foreground.

Units

  • Metric (km, m) or Imperial (mi, ft)
  • Affects distance displays throughout the app: zone distances, ping distances, GPS simulator speed

Sound Notifications

  • Plays sounds on ping events. Sounds follow your phone's media volume.
  • When enabled, three individual sounds can be toggled:
    • Ping Sent — Sound when a TX ping or discovery is sent
    • Response Received — Sound when a repeater echo or RX is received
    • Disconnect Alert — Triple beep when pinging stops unexpectedly (e.g., BLE drop mid-session)
  • Coexists with other audio (transient focus with ducking on Android, ambient on iOS)
  • Useful when wardriving with phone mounted out of view

Map Management

Offline Maps (Mobile only)

Download map areas to your device for wardriving without a data connection. Opens the Offline Maps screen:

  • Download Area: Pick a map style (Liberty, Dark, or Light — Satellite is not downloadable), a zoom range, and an area on the map. An estimated tile count is shown before downloading.
  • Storage: Shows downloaded areas and the ambient cache (tiles auto-cached while panning), with a configurable storage limit and options to clear or delete.

Use Downloaded Tiles Only

  • When enabled, the map uses only your downloaded areas — no network tile requests at all
  • Useful for guaranteed offline operation or saving mobile data

Coverage Overlay Opacity

  • Slider (30%–100%) controlling how strongly the community coverage overlay is drawn over the base map

Grid Mode

  • Simplified (default): 300m coverage cells, merged cells, grouped repeaters. Loads faster.
  • Detailed: 100m coverage cells with finer detail and non-grouped repeaters.
  • Matches the Grid Mode option on the web map

Color Vision

  • Choose a colour palette optimised for your vision type: Default, Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, or Achromatopsia
  • Applies to the coverage overlay and map colours, matching the web map's accessibility palettes

Map Marker Style

  • Choose the visual style used for ping markers on the map

GPS Marker

  • Choose the marker that represents your position (including the "Chomper" style that faces your direction of travel)

Top Repeaters on Map

  • Shows the Top Heard overlay on the map with the best 3 repeaters by SNR from your most recent ping
  • Disabled by default

Ping Settings

Anonymous Mode

  • Renames your companion device to "Anonymous" on the mesh (requires a clean disconnect to reset your node name)
  • Changing while connected triggers a brief reconnection
  • Confirmation dialog when enabling or disabling while connected
  • Cannot change while auto-ping is running

Broadcast My Coordinates

  • Disabled by default. By default, your TX pings do not contain your GPS position on the air — they carry a short anonymous token instead, and your coordinates travel only to the MeshMapper server over the internet. Anyone listening on the wardriving channel sees the token, not your location.
  • Enabling this appends your real GPS coordinates to the on-air ping message, visible to anyone with the community channel key.
  • Leave this off unless you specifically want your live position visible on the mesh (e.g., so local mesh users can follow your drive in real time).

Auto-Ping Interval

How frequently pings are sent in Active, Hybrid, and Trace modes:

  • 15 seconds — Fast (more coverage, causes more mesh load)
  • 30 seconds — Normal (balanced coverage and mesh load, default)
  • 60 seconds — Slow (less coverage, little mesh load)
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping
  • Regional admin may enforce a minimum interval (you cannot choose faster)

Note

Does not affect Passive Mode (fixed 30-second discovery interval). In Hybrid Mode, the effective interval between channel messages is doubled since discovery requests alternate with TX.

Min Ping Distance

Minimum distance you must move before the next auto-ping. Prevents spamming from a stationary position.

  • Enter any value in meters (free-text input)
  • Default: 25m
  • Minimum: 25m (enforced by the app)

Note

Does not apply to manual pings. Cannot be changed during auto-ping.

Auto-Stop After Idle

  • Automatically stops auto-ping after 30 minutes without GPS movement
  • Prevents unnecessary transmissions and saves battery
  • Enabled by default
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Modes

Flood Traffic

  • Shows or hides the Active Mode, Hybrid Mode, and manual Send Ping controls (everything that sends flood channel messages)
  • With Flood Traffic off, only Passive and Trace modes are available
  • May be locked off by your regional admin if the region has disabled flood wardriving traffic

Hybrid Mode

  • Alternates between TX channel messages and discovery requests each interval
  • Produces richer data with 50% fewer channel messages (less mesh flooding)
  • Enabled by default across all regions
  • May be locked by regional admin (shown in amber when enforced)
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Discovery Drop

  • Counts discovery requests with no response as "failed pings" reported to the API
  • Helps identify dead zones for network planning
  • Requires repeater firmware 1.10+ to respond to discovery requests
  • Disabled by default
  • May be enforced by regional admin (shown in amber when set)
  • Confirmation dialog before enabling
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Filtering

CARpeater Filter

If you're wardriving with a repeater mounted in your vehicle or nearby ("CARpeater"), enable this filter so that direct echoes from your own repeater are stripped from results. Without it, every ping would show your co-located repeater as "heard" with an extremely strong signal, polluting the coverage map with false data.

  • Enter the full 6-digit hex ID (3 bytes) of your co-located repeater (e.g., "A3B2FF")
  • The app automatically truncates to match your region's hop byte size (1, 2, or 3 bytes)
  • Multi-hop packets through your CARpeater are stripped to report the underlying repeater
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Disable RSSI Filter

By default, the app drops any packet with RSSI equal to or stronger (closer to 0) than -30 dBm because a signal that strong almost certainly came from a co-located repeater and is not meaningful coverage data. Only disable this if you are certain no co-located repeater is within range. If disabled while a CARpeater is present, your device will report false coverage data to the MeshMapper community map, degrading accuracy for everyone.

  • Default: Drops packets with RSSI ≥ -30 dBm (carpeater threshold)
  • Enabling allows all signal strengths through
  • Confirmation dialog warns about community map impact before enabling
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Radio

TX Bytes

Repeater ID size in TX/RX path hops:

  • 1 byte — 256 unique IDs, standard for most networks
  • 2 bytes — ~65K unique IDs, reduces collisions
  • 3 bytes — ~16M unique IDs, maximum resolution

Warning

Requires both your companion device and repeaters to be on firmware 1.14+. Only change this if you understand what you're doing, or if your regional admin has enforced a value. RX always auto-detects the sender's byte size regardless of your TX setting.

States:

  • "Set by Regional Admin" (amber) when region enforces a value
  • "Firmware 1.14+ required" (amber) if firmware is too old
  • "Connect to radio to configure" (amber) when disconnected
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Note

Applied to your radio during connection, restored on clean disconnect.

Trace Bytes

Repeater ID size for trace path requests:

  • 1 byte, 2 bytes, or 4 bytes

This is separate from TX Bytes because traces use a different encoding in the MeshCore protocol (bitshift encoding vs simple counter). The size options don't match 1:1:

TX/RX (simple counter) Trace (bitshift encoding)
Mode 0 → 1 byte Mode 0 → 1 byte
Mode 1 → 2 bytes Mode 1 → 2 bytes
Mode 2 → 3 bytes Mode 2 → 4 bytes

Warning

3-byte traces are not supported by the MeshCore protocol. When your region uses 3-byte TX paths, set Trace Bytes to 4.

Warning

Requires companion firmware 1.14+. Only change this if you understand what you're doing.

States:

  • "Firmware 1.14+ required" (amber) if firmware is too old
  • "Connect to radio to configure" (amber) when disconnected
  • Cannot be changed during auto-ping

Delete Channel on Disconnect

  • Enabled (default): Removes #wardriving channel from your radio on disconnect. Keeps radio clean.
  • Disabled: Channel remains. Slightly faster reconnection since it doesn't need to be recreated.

Data

Queued Pings

Shows items waiting to be uploaded. Two actions:

  • Force Upload: Immediately upload all queued items
  • Clear Queue: Permanently delete all queued pings. Confirmation dialog included.

Clear Map Markers

  • Removes all TX, RX, discovery, and trace markers from the map display
  • Does not affect uploaded data or the upload queue

Offline Sessions

Sessions recorded in Offline Mode. Each session shows:

  • Filename (date-based)
  • Creation timestamp
  • Ping count
  • Device info

Actions per session:

  • Upload: Send to MeshMapper servers
  • Download: Save raw JSON to your device (via the system share sheet on mobile)
  • Delete: Remove from local storage

API Endpoints

MeshMapper API

  • Always active — this is where your wardriving data goes.

Custom API Endpoint

Forward your wardrive data to a third-party HTTPS endpoint in addition to MeshMapper:

  • Endpoint URL and API Key fields (HTTPS is required; the key is sent as an X-API-Key header)
  • Include Contact Key: Optionally share your device's public key prefix with the endpoint (on by default, can be disabled)
  • Import from Clipboard: Paste a meshmapper://custom-api?... configuration link from an endpoint operator to auto-fill both fields
  • Best-effort and fire-and-forget — a broken custom endpoint never affects your MeshMapper uploads

See the Third Party API guide for the full payload contract (aimed at endpoint developers).

About

App Name and Version

  • Shows "MeshMapper" and current version
  • Tap version to copy to clipboard

Submit Feedback

  • Opens bug report dialog to report bugs or request features
  • Can attach debug log files if logging is enabled (select which files to include)
  • GitHub: View issues and source code
  • Discord: Join the community chat
  • Community: Built with contributions from the Greater Ottawa Mesh Radio Enthusiasts community
  • Buy us a coffee: Support MeshMapper development (not shown on iOS)

Exit (Android only)

Close App After Disconnect

  • App automatically exits after disconnecting from your radio

Close App

  • Immediately exits the app
  • Confirmation dialog. Warns if connected.

Debug (Mobile only)

Debug Logs

  • Writes detailed debug logs to files on your device
  • Orange "LOGGING" badge when active
  • Timestamped entries, auto-rotate (max 10 files, max 4.5 MB per file)
  • Always disabled on app start (must re-enable each session)

When logs exist:

  • Log file list: Date, size, active status
  • View: In-app log viewer
  • Share: System share sheet
  • Upload: Send to MeshMapper team for analysis
  • Delete All: Remove all stored log files