Live radar showing real aircraft around you, updated every 5 seconds. No sign-up needed.

1 Tap any aircraft

See its callsign, route (airport codes and city names), altitude, speed, airline and a photo. The flight path trail appears on the map.

2 Toolbar — bottom of screen

• Traffic — list of all aircraft, nearest first. Tap one to jump to it. Also where you track a specific aircraft by hex or registration (see below).
• Stats — live numbers: total traffic, altitude spread, active runways.
• Setup — set your location name, change radar range, data source.
• Comms — one-tap ATC audio, no hardware needed (see below).
• Locate — centers the map on your GPS position.
• Search — fly to any city, airport or address; also opens from the 🔎 icon at the top of the screen.
• Overhead — your 5 closest aircraft right now, with route and distance.
• Pause — freezes the radar (data keeps buffering) if you need to study something without it moving.
• Spotter — AR mode: point your camera at the sky, a live reticle shows what's overhead using your compass heading.
• Demo — the guided tour mentioned above.

3 Top bar icons

• 🚢 Ship toggle — live marine (AIS) traffic alongside the planes, off by default.
• 🔎 Search — same as the Search toolbar button.
• ⤢ Back to map — closes every open panel in one tap if things get crowded.
• ↻ Refresh — reloads the app to pick up the latest version.
• ☕ Support — a voluntary tip jar, nothing gated behind it.

4 Colors & symbols

• Icon color = altitude — cyan (low) · green · amber · violet · red (high)
• Cyan lines = runways. Zoom in for full airport detail.
• Amber pulsing runway = actively in use right now.
• Amber dot = your radar center, cyan dots = saved/friend locations — both breathe gently; tap one to reveal its name.

5 Track a specific aircraft

In the Traffic panel, enter an ICAO hex code or a registration (e.g. PH-UTL) and tap Track. It watches the same live feed the app already polls — no separate lookup — and auto-selects the aircraft the instant it's in range. Not there yet? It just sits in the list as "watching…" until it appears.

6 Listen to ATC — no hardware needed

Tap an aircraft, then tap its 🎧 badge — Comms opens with the nearest airport already filled in, and a hint tells you whether it's an arrival or departure feed to look for. Near Schiphol (EHAM), real ATC audio (Approach, Radar, Dutch Mil) plays instantly, right in the app. Anywhere else, a guaranteed Listen on LiveATC.net link opens the stream in your browser.

Found a working stream URL yourself for another airport? Paste it under "paste a direct stream URL" and tap 💾 Save — it's remembered on your device and shows up automatically every time you open that airport's Comms again.

7 RTL-SDR — your own hardware tuner (optional)

Got an RTL-SDR v3 dongle? Comms' collapsed Advanced: RTL-SDR section gives you a full tuner — real frequencies, squelch, live audio — instead of relying on LiveATC streams. One-time setup:

1. Install the two tools it needs: brew install rtl-sdr ffmpeg (macOS) or sudo apt install rtl-sdr ffmpeg (Linux).
2. Run the helper script bundled with the app: python3 skywatch_airband.py. Leave it running in a terminal.
3. In Comms → Advanced: RTL-SDR, confirm the helper address is http://localhost:8000, then tap any frequency to tune it.

Optional: pip install vosk before starting the helper turns on a live, best-effort ATC Transcript of whatever frequency you're tuned to (offline speech-to-text, no cloud) — real ATC audio is noisy and jargon-heavy, so treat it as a rough aid, not a perfect record. Everything else works identically without it.