Tetracom is a walkie-talkie style messaging app. One tap holds to talk, and your voice goes straight to the person you picked. This page walks through everything the phone app can do, grouped by area. Two topics have their own deep-dive pages — you’ll find links to them in the matching sections below.
On this page
- Getting started & identities
- Contacts
- Talk: push-to-talk voice
- Asking with options
- Location & the map
- Notifications & sounds
- Staying connected when locked
- Account & settings
Getting started & identities
The first time you open Tetracom, you register a userid. A short form asks for four things: your Server URL, a Userid (3 to 30 characters), a Display name, and your Date of birth. Fill them in and tap Register.
Your userid is your permanent handle — it is how other people reach you (for example, alice_e2e). Your display name is just a friendly label your contacts see; it is not how people find you, and you can set a different display name for each identity.
Several identities on one phone
You can keep more than one identity on a single device. Each identity has its own contacts, keys, history, and inbox — they are completely separate.
- Tap the account-circle icon in the top-right of the main screen. A dropdown lists all your identities, with a checkmark next to the one that is active.
- To make a new one, tap Add another identity at the bottom of the dropdown and register it the same way you did the first.
- To switch, tap the account-circle icon and then tap a different identity in the list. The app switches over immediately.
Contacts
The Contacts tab is where you manage who you can talk to. Tap the Add a contact button to open a dialog with three choices:
- Add by userid — look someone up by their userid and send them a connection request.
- Invite via SMS — send a text invite to someone who is not on Tetracom yet.
- Redeem code — paste an invite code that someone texted you.
Connection requests
Connections need approval from both sides. When someone wants to connect with you, their request appears in a Pending requests section as a card with Approve and Reject buttons. Requests you have sent appear under My pending requests with a Withdraw button while you wait for the other person to respond.
Online status
A contact who is connected right now shows a green dot and the word online on their detail screen. This is handy before you try to talk to them or ask for their location.
Blocking
To block someone, open the contact and tap Block (the red button). A confirmation explains what happens: Tetracom will silently drop every message that person sends, they are not notified that they were blocked, and they are removed from your contacts. Once blocked, the button changes to Unblock. Unblocking restores delivery, but it does not re-add them to your contacts — you would send a new connection request for that.
Per-contact settings
The contact detail screen also has a few per-person controls:
- A Share my location with this person checkbox (see Location below).
- A button to request that contact’s location, enabled only when they are online.
- A per-contact notification override (see Notifications below).
Talk: push-to-talk voice
The Talk tab is where you speak. Push-to-talk works two ways:
- Press and hold the phone’s Volume Up button, or
- Press and hold the on-screen microphone (Talk) button.
Speak while you hold. The moment you let go, the clip sends automatically. If you keep holding, the recording auto-stops after 30 seconds.
Hearing what people send you
Incoming voice does not auto-play. Voice messages land in your History tab with a play button. Tap it to listen — the clip plays through the loudspeaker. You can replay any message any time.
Asking with options
This is how you send text in Tetracom. Instead of a freeform chat message, you send a question with a row of tappable option buttons. The recipient taps one, and their answer comes straight back to you.
Open it with the Text button on the Talk tab. You must have exactly one recipient picked first — otherwise a toast appears reading “Pick exactly one recipient to send text to.”
In short: you can add anywhere from 2 to 32 options, mark a question Urgent, and choose to be notified if the answer changes. There is a lot more to it — the full walkthrough is here:
Full guide: Asking with options →
Location & the map
There are two separate location features, and it helps to keep them apart:
- Sharing your location with a contact — sending where you are to another person.
- Where am I? — a button that just shows you where you are, sending nothing to anyone.
Sharing your location
Sharing is off by default for privacy, and you turn it on in two steps:
- Turn on the global Send my location with messages switch in Settings → Location.
- Then, on a specific contact’s detail screen, turn on Share my location with this person.
While that is on, your location rides along with the messages you send to that person, and it automatically answers their location requests.
Viewing a location you received
Opening a location someone sent you brings up an in-app map (OpenStreetMap) with their pin on it. From there you can tap Open in Google Maps if you want satellite imagery or directions.
Where am I?
The Where am I? button lives on the Talk tab. It opens the in-app map and drops a pin on your own current spot. Nothing is sent to anyone — it is purely for you.
Full guide: Where am I? & the map →
Notifications & sounds
The Settings → Notifications screen controls what happens when a message arrives. You pick a behavior (for example: play immediately, play a notification sound, vibrate, or stay silent) and a sound.
Sound choices
There are ten options, and each one has a preview/play button so you can hear it first:
- Walkie squelch
- YYZ in Morse
- Two short beeps
- Sender’s ID in Morse — spells out the sender’s userid.
- Custom text in Morse — type any short text and hear it as Morse.
- Single chime
- Rising arpeggio
- Triple tap
- Pick a file from device — choose any audio file on your phone.
- Record from mic — record a few seconds yourself: pick a duration, tap record, tap stop.
Per-contact override
On any contact’s detail screen, Notification override for this contact lets you give just that one person a different behavior and/or sound, overriding your global default. Useful when you want one contact to always break through.
Audio cues
Also under Notifications, you can add optional short beeps around voice playback and recording. Each is a count from 0 to 3, with a sound you can choose:
- Beeps before voice plays
- Beeps after voice plays
- Beeps before recording starts
- Beeps after recording stops
Staying connected when locked
The Settings → Connection screen has a Stay connected when phone is locked switch. Turning it on places a small, silent, always-on notification in your status bar. That notification is what stops Android from suspending Tetracom while your screen is off or locked. Without it, your phone may stop delivering messages in the background.
Account & settings
Here is a quick rundown of the Settings screens in the app:
- History — cap how many messages are kept per identity. Choices are 10, 20 (the default), 50, 100, 250, and 500. When the cap is exceeded, the oldest messages are dropped.
- Location — the global Send my location with messages switch (see Location).
- Connection — the Stay connected when phone is locked switch (see Staying connected).
- Notifications — behavior, sounds, per-contact overrides, and audio cues (see Notifications).
- Parental controls — link a parent and child together by userid.
- Identities — rename or remove each identity, or add a new one.
- Diagnostics — view the last crash report, and copy or clear it.
Removing an identity
In Settings → Identities, each identity has a Remove button. Removing an identity wipes it from this phone — its userid, keys, contacts, and history all go. The server still reserves your userid, so nobody else can take it later. This cannot be undone.
Still stuck?
If something here does not match what you see, or you hit a problem this page does not cover, email help@tetracom.me. Please include your phone make and model, your Android version, and the Tetracom app version so we can help faster.