Guides

Short, technical guides to every part of Squawk.

The live map

Reading the map — every aircraft broadcasting ADS-B/MLAT appears in real time (1–2 s cadence up close, 1 s on a selected plane). Labels rank emergencies > military > airline > GA; tap any plane for its sheet: altitude profile, trail, photos, route and squawk.
Search — the top search bar takes callsigns, registrations, hex codes and airports.
Filters — Map options → Filters: altitude/speed ranges, airline, aircraft type (B738, F16…), and category chips (military / drones / commercial / cargo / GA). Military-only is also a map view mode.
Trails — altitude-coloured, split per flight leg. The calendar button on a plane sheet replays that aircraft's full recorded history.
Pins — tap a plane, then the pin icon on its sheet (6, or 25 with Pro); pinned aircraft keep coloured trails and survive filters.

Zones — draw a zone (or long-press anywhere on the map for a quick military-alert zone); one push per entry, re-armed after 30 min outside or 10 mi away. Filter it by types, tails or categories.
Tracked aircraft — follow specific tails/hexes anywhere in the world.
Base movements (Pro) — pushes when watched military bases launch or recover (230+ bases), with category filters (jets, tankers, cargo, VIP, ISR, helos).
Worldwide emergencies — one toggle for global 7700/7600/7500 pushes.
Lifelist — get told when an aircraft you've never logged is in range.

Map options → Area replay. Scrub any area of the planet back 24 hours at 10-second resolution; the day button pages back up to 30 days (Pro) — long-press it to jump straight back to today.
Speeds 10–120×. Tap a ghost for its actual altitude-coloured trail; positions interpolate between archive fixes.
The archive lags ~35 minutes behind live; the first jump to an old day can take ~20s while the archive chunk loads.

Plug a scanner (e.g. BC125AT) into your phone via a USB audio interface — audio is transcribed on-device with Whisper. No audio leaves the phone.
Connect the audio dongle to the phone first, then the scanner.

Point the phone at the sky; aircraft overhead are projected onto the camera with callsign, type, altitude and distance. Works best outdoors with a clear GPS fix.

Log sightings from any plane sheet; lifelist, badges and streaks build automatically. Export everything as CSV from Account → Data.
Community sightings power the leaderboard and spot pages — no invented data, everything is real logs.
Spotting locations: curated spots with frequencies and squadron info; drop your own pins anywhere.

Weather radar (Pro), FAA airspace & TFRs (Pro), SIGMETs, PIREPs & winds aloft (Pro), Fire Tracker (hotspots, incidents, perimeters, airtanker bases, fire cameras), Rocket launches with T-countdowns and "space jellyfish" plume-visibility forecasts.
Overlays — day/night terminator with real twilight gradients, and live North Atlantic oceanic tracks.
Trails poster (Pro) — render hours of an area's traffic into one altitude-coloured poster image from Area replay.

Share any plane: its sheet's Share button sends a data card plus a live tracking link anyone can open in a browser.
Live Activities: follow a flight or an airport from the Lock Screen — start from the plane or airport sheet.
Emergency squawk meanings: 7700 general emergency · 7600 radio failure · 7500 unlawful interference.

Squawk is the live flight tracker for people who look up — on iPhone, with alerts that reach your Lock Screen even when the app is closed.

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