The Settings tab lets you configure the app and your connected Meshtastic radio.
General app preferences including map style, notification behavior, and theme. These affect only the app — not the radio.
Radio configuration requires a connected node. Select your node from the Configure section if you have multiple nodes.
The Configure picker lists live nodes from the current node database, with favorites first. If the node database is reset or the selected node disappears, Settings clears that selection instead of opening configuration for a stale node. Reconnect to a radio or choose a currently listed node to continue configuring it.
LoRa settings control how your radio communicates on the mesh:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Region | Your geographical region. Must be set correctly — using the wrong region is illegal and prevents communication with local nodes. The standard regions are always available; the amateur (ham) 2m / 70cm / 1.25m bands and the EU 866 / narrow bands require firmware 2.8.0 or later and only appear when your connected radio supports them. |
| Modem Preset | Speed/range trade-off. Most users should use Long Fast or Long Slow. On firmware 2.8+, the preset list is filtered to those that are legal for the selected region (see below). |
| Hop Limit | The number of times a message is repeated by other nodes. Higher values increase range but also mesh traffic. |
| Frequency Slot | Fine-tune the exact frequency within your region. |
On firmware 2.8.0 or later, the radio tells the app which modem presets are legal in each region. When you pick a region, the Presets list narrows to the compatible set, and if your current preset isn't allowed there the app switches you to that region's default. Setting the region to US on a newly flashed node defaults the preset to Long Turbo. Amateur (ham) bands such as the Tiny and Narrow presets are marked licensed — the app shows a warning, and you should enable Licensed Operator (and set your call sign) in User config before transmitting. On older firmware the full preset list is shown unchanged.
Manage up to 8 channels (0–7). Channel 0 is the primary broadcast channel. Additional channels create isolated messaging groups with their own encryption keys.
When sharing channels, the share screen shows a QR code and link, and — on iPhones with NFC hardware (iOS 18 or later) — a Write to NFC Tag button. Hold a writable NFC tag near the top of your iPhone to save the channel link to it, replacing any content the tag already held; tapping that tag on another phone opens the same add-or-replace channels flow the QR code does.
Configure PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) encryption for direct messages. Requires firmware 2.5+.
On hardened lockdown-firmware radios, this page also shows a Lockdown section with the session status, a Lock Now button, and a Forget Stored Passphrase button. See Lockdown Mode.
Set your Long Name (display name) and Short Name (4-character/emoji identifier shown in the node circle).
BLE radio settings including PIN mode and power saving. Changes apply on next radio restart.
Device role, serial output, debug log streaming, and node info broadcast interval.
Screen timeout, auto-carousel of screens, flip screen for alternate mounting orientations, and OLED contrast.
Controls which direction the on-device compass points when the screen is at rest. Use this when your radio is mounted at an angle or upside-down.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| 0° | Default orientation — north at the top. |
| 90° | Rotated 90° clockwise. |
| 180° | Rotated 180° (upside-down). |
| 270° | Rotated 270° clockwise (90° counter-clockwise). |
| 0° Inverted | Default orientation with the display flipped (mirrored). |
| 90° Inverted | 90° clockwise with the display flipped. |
| 180° Inverted | 180° with the display flipped. |
| 270° Inverted | 270° clockwise with the display flipped. |
Wi-Fi SSID/password for TCP connection, NTP server, and Ethernet (supported hardware only).
GPS update interval, position precision, and smart position broadcasting. Enable Broadcast Position to share your location with the mesh.
The GPS Mode selector (Enabled / Disabled / Not Present) is the single source of truth for the GPS state that the app writes to the radio. The older on/off gpsEnabled field it replaced is deprecated: the app no longer writes it, but still reads it from older firmware so existing devices keep working. No action is needed when upgrading — your GPS setting is preserved.
Battery saving profiles, sleep modes, and minimum wake time. Critical for solar-powered router nodes.
Optional feature modules. Only available when your connected node supports the module.
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| Ambient Lighting | Control NeoPixel/LED lighting on supported hardware. |
| Audio | Codec2 voice communication settings. Only available when LoRa region is set to LORA_24 (2.4 GHz). Configure Codec2 encoding, bitrate, PTT pin, and I2S GPIO pins. |
| Canned Messages | Pre-programmed message shortcuts accessible from the device buttons. |
| Detection Sensor | Configure PIR motion or contact sensors. |
| External Notification | Buzzer or LED alerts for incoming messages. |
| Mesh Beacon | Advertise this node's mesh so other users' discovery scans can find and join it, and listen for beacons from nearby meshes. Requires firmware 2.8.0+. |
| MQTT | Uplink/downlink messages to an MQTT broker for internet bridging. |
| Neighbor Info | Periodically broadcasts information about directly-heard neighbors to help visualise mesh topology. Update interval ranges from 4 hours (default) to 72 hours. Enable Transmit over LoRa to share neighbour data over the radio in addition to MQTT and PhoneAPI. |
| Range Test | Automated range testing with position logging. |
| Pax Counter | Anonymised foot-traffic counting via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi probe detection. Configure WiFi Threshold (dBm) and BLE Threshold (dBm) to control the RSSI sensitivity for device counting — default is −80 dBm for both. |
| Ringtone | Custom RTTTL melodies for notification tones. |
| Store & Forward | Store packets for nodes that are temporarily offline. |
| Serial | UART serial output for integration with other hardware. |
| Status Message | Set a custom status message broadcast to the mesh. |
| Telemetry | Device, environment, and air-quality sensor reporting. |
| Traffic Management | Mesh traffic optimisation — position deduplication, rate limiting, and unknown-packet filtering. Requires firmware 2.8.0+. |
The Traffic Management module helps reduce unnecessary mesh traffic and improve network efficiency. It is available on nodes running firmware 2.8.0 or later. Each feature is enabled implicitly by a non-zero value — turning a section's toggle off (or the master Enabled switch) clears its values and disables that feature on the radio.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enabled | Master enable for the traffic management module. |
| Position Deduplication | |
| Position Dedup | Drop redundant position broadcasts from the same node. |
| Min Interval (s) | Minimum seconds between position updates from the same node. |
| NodeInfo Direct Response | |
| Direct Response | Respond to NodeInfo requests directly from local cache instead of flooding the mesh. |
| Max Hops | Maximum hop distance from the requestor at which direct NodeInfo responses are served from the local cache. |
| Rate Limiting | |
| Rate Limiting | Enable per-node rate limiting to throttle chatty nodes. |
| Window (s) | Time window in seconds for rate limiting calculations. |
| Max Packets | Maximum packets allowed per node within the rate limit window. |
| Unknown Packet Handling | |
| Drop Unknown | Enable dropping of unknown/undecryptable packets. |
| Threshold | Maximum unknown/undecryptable packets per rate window before the source is dropped. |
The Tools entry appears only on iPhones with NFC hardware running iOS 18 or later; it is hidden on iPads, Mac Catalyst, and any device without an NFC radio.
It contains an NFC Tags section:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Write Contact to NFC Tag | Saves your connected node's contact link to a writable NFC tag, replacing any content it already held. Hold the tag near the top of your iPhone. |
| Scan NFC Tag | Reads a Meshtastic tag and imports what it holds — a contact opens the add-contact confirmation sheet, a channel link opens the add-or-replace channels flow, exactly as scanning the equivalent QR code would. |
If a scanned tag holds something other than a Meshtastic contact or channel link, or its channel settings can't be read, the scan reports the problem rather than appearing to succeed.
Tags written by the Meshtastic app for Android are interchangeable with these — both platforms write the same contact and channel links.
Check for and apply OTA firmware updates to your connected radio directly from the app. See Firmware Updates for full details.
On devices running iOS 26 or later, the in-app documentation is automatically translated to your device language when it differs from English.
If translation is unavailable (older than iOS 26, unsupported language, or language pack not downloaded), the original English documentation is displayed. The app never shows blank or broken pages.