Version 1.8 on Google Play · Android · iOS with Apple for review
APRS Connect is a messaging-first APRS client. Conversations are kept as threads with per-message delivery state, the APRS service bots (weather, group nets, SMS and email gateways, Winlink) each get a guided screen, APRS OTA ops are hosted and chased with a tap, and every received frame is stored and decoded. It connects to KISS TNCs over Bluetooth Classic, BLE, USB, or TCP — or straight to a radio's speaker and mic with the built-in audio modem — or to APRS-IS over the network. Whole map regions download for use with no signal, and the app speaks seven languages.
Free to install and use over APRS-IS. APRS Connect Pro adds radios, offline maps and more: $3.99/month or $29.99/year, after a 7-day free trial.
One thread per station, in order, kept. Every message shows where it actually got to — sent, acknowledged, retrying, or given up on — and retries on its own rather than leaving you to guess and re-send. With Pro, a message that has run out of retries can wait for its station instead and go out again the next time that callsign is heard, up to three tries over two weeks.
Much of what answers on APRS is automated: weather forecasts, group nets, SMS and email gateways, Winlink, callsign lookup. These bots expect exact wording. APRS Connect keeps a directory of them, explains what each one answers, and composes the message for you — the outgoing command is always shown before it is sent, and you can always type it yourself instead.
KISS TNCs over Bluetooth Classic, BLE, USB serial, and TCP; a built-in AFSK audio modem that needs no TNC at all; and APRS-IS over the network, with a filter you control — several at once, as named channels. Reception keeps running in the background behind a notification you can see, and the log marks the gaps when it couldn't. APRS-IS is free; the radio channels are APRS Connect Pro.
Stations, objects and beacons plot with their real APRS symbols on a vector basemap served from our own tile host. Every tile you have viewed is cached on the phone — you set the cache size — and redraws with no connection. With Pro, download whole regions ahead of a trip, or add a map file of your own, and the area draws in full with no signal at all.
Messaging, services, nets, the map, stations and the packet log are free to use over the internet backbone. APRS Connect Pro switches on the radio channels, offline region downloads, the radar layer, GPX and KML track export, extra beacon profiles, capture replay, retry when heard, mobiles nearby, the digipeater coverage map, and running the phone as an IGate or digipeater. Let it lapse and nothing is deleted; APRS-IS stays connected.
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, on every screen. The app follows the phone's language, or you pin one. Protocol words stay in English so what you quote to another operator reads the same on their screen.
Every frame you hear is kept and decoded field by field — path, symbol, telemetry, the lot — so you can tell a bad digipeat from a bad antenna. Reception charts show what you heard, and just as usefully, when you heard nothing at all.
Everything lives in a database on the phone, so the app stays fully usable with no connection at all — your messages, your packet history, your map. Back the whole lot up to a JSON file and restore or merge it later.
This is the short version — the features page lists everything in the current build.
APRS OTA · aprsota.org
APRS OTA is an activity run on top of APRS: you announce an op — a session, roughly an hour — and operators anywhere try to reach you before the clock runs out. Each contact you confirm scores, and adds time.
APRS Connect handles the exchange with the bot. One tap starts an op. Callers arrive as cards showing where they're calling from, a countdown tracks the time remaining with a button to extend it, and confirming a contact is a tap plus an optional note. Chasing works from the other side of the same screen: see who is on the air right now, and call them.
None of it needs an internet connection. The phone talks to the radio — over Bluetooth, USB, or an audio cable — and the radio carries the rest.
APRS Connect is on Google Play for Android. On a phone the button opens the listing; on a computer it shows a code your camera can read, because a store page on a desktop isn't much use for installing anything.
Free to install and use over APRS-IS. APRS Connect Pro adds radios, offline maps and more: $3.99/month or $29.99/year, after a 7-day free trial.
The iOS app is built and is with Apple for App Store review; there's no listing to install from yet. Leave an address and we'll email you the moment there is one — and when something worth knowing about ships on Android.
Prefer chat? Join the Discord to follow development as it happens.
A release most days since launch on 26 August. The three most recent — every one, with what it carried, is on the status page.
Shipping is a starting line, not a finish. Here is the honest state of it — the status page has the detail.
