Coming to iOS and Android
Let the right people know you’re in town.
Squawk is an ephemeral proximity radar for people you already trust. Drop a beacon when you land, and it expires on its own. No always-on tracking, no feed, and no server that can read where you are.
Built for pilots, military crews, consultants and anyone else who keeps waking up in a different city.
Des Moines · Indefinite
Venue: Smokey Row · 4 hrs left
In town right now
- MBMarcus B.Smokey RowHere now
- SKSarah K.Des Moines2 days
- PNPriya N.Court Avenue4 hrs
- JTJordan T.Ankeny1 day
The problem
You were in the same city and neither of you knew.
The tools that would have told you are the ones you would never install. Always-on location sharing broadcasts your every movement to a permanent group, drains your battery, and quietly builds a history of exactly where you sleep. The alternative is a mass text on every landing, which is friction you will stop doing by the third trip.
Squawk is the middle path: a deliberate, bounded, self-expiring signal that says I am here, roughly, for a while — sent to the specific people you chose, and to nobody else, ever.
How it works
Three things, and then it gets out of the way.
Add people you already trust
Scan a QR code in person, or send an invite link through whatever messenger you already use. There is no address-book upload and no directory to be found in — you only ever appear to someone who added you, and you only see them once you have added each other.
Drop a beacon when you land
A city beacon says "I am in Des Moines" for up to 72 hours — up to 30 days on Pro. A venue beacon says "I am at Smokey Row" for up to 18 hours. Both expire on their own. There is no always-on location, no background trail, and nothing to remember to switch off.
See who is actually in range
Your phone decrypts what your contacts sent, does the distance maths locally, and shows you the short list of people worth texting. Tap someone to call, message, or email them in your own apps. Squawk hands off and gets out of the way.
Privacy by design
The server is a blind postman.
This is an architectural property, not a promise in a policy document. Location maths runs entirely on the two phones involved. Our relay moves sealed envelopes between accounts and stamps them with an expiry — it has no ability to open one, and neither do we.
What never reaches our servers
- Your GPS coordinates
- Your location history
- Who your contacts are
- Your contacts’ names, photos, or numbers
- Your address book
- Anything you type into a beacon note
What our servers do hold
- Your email address, for sign-in and account recovery
- An account ID
- Encrypted envelopes it cannot read, deleted the moment they expire
- An encrypted backup blob whose key never leaves your phone
Concretely: your device converts a dropped pin into an Uber H3 hexagon — about one to three miles across for a city, about 150 feet for a venue — encrypts that hexagon with each trusted contact’s public key, and hands the sealed result to the relay. Their phone decrypts it and draws the radius. A full breach of our infrastructure would yield a pile of undecryptable blobs and a list of email addresses.
Read the detail in the Privacy Policy.
Deliberate choices
Small on purpose.
Ephemeral by construction
Every beacon carries an expiry the server stamps with its own clock, so a spoofed device clock cannot create a permanent one. When it lapses, it is deleted — not hidden.
One body, one location
You get one city beacon and one tethered venue beacon. Dropping a new one replaces the old. A venue has to be within 75 miles of your city anchor, so the app cannot be used to sweep the map.
Remove trust properly
Removing a contact wipes their key from your phone and fires one final severance message. Their device stops broadcasting to you and never pings back — to them, you simply go quiet forever.
Burn your account
One confirmed action, gated by your PIN, destroys the account and everything on the server, and wipes the device. No retention period, no support ticket, no "are you sure you don’t want to just deactivate".
Nicknames and notes stay yours
A nickname or photo you set for someone lives on your device and in your own encrypted backup. It is never sent to them and never touches the server.
Speaks 19 languages
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Polish, and Dutch — including full right-to-left layout.
Free and Pro
Everything that matters is in the free tier.
Pro adds range and discretion. It does not unlock privacy, and it never will — the zero-knowledge architecture is the product, not an upsell.
Free
- Unlimited trusted contacts
- City beacons up to 72 hours
- Venue beacons up to 18 hours
- 50-mile radar radius
- Full end-to-end encryption
- Encrypted PIN backup and restore
Pro
- Everything in Free
- City beacons up to 30 days — for a long stay you set once
- Indefinite city anchor — for a home base you don’t want to re-drop
- Expanded radar — up to 250 miles, in 50-mile steps
- Ghost mode — watch your radar without broadcasting
- Silent drop — arrive without setting off anyone’s alerts
$9.99 per year. Billed by the App Store or Google Play.
Questions
The ones worth asking.
Does Squawk track me in the background?
No. Squawk reads your location only at the moment you drop a beacon, and only to work out which hexagon of the map you are in. There is no background location permission, no trail, and nothing to leave running.
How can the server route messages it cannot read?
The same way a postal service delivers a sealed envelope. Your phone encrypts each update with your contact’s public key before it leaves the device. The relay sees an opaque blob, a recipient, and an expiry time — never the contents. All distance maths happens on the two phones.
What exactly do my contacts see?
Only what you deliberately broadcast: the city hexagon you anchored to, a venue if you dropped one, any note you typed, and when you arrived. They never see your exact coordinates, your movement between beacons, or how long your city beacon is set to run.
Can someone find me if they know my email or phone number?
No. There is no search, no suggested contacts, and no lookup of any kind. The only way anyone reaches your radar is if you both exchanged invites and added each other.
What happens if I forget my PIN?
Your contact list and profile are encrypted with a key derived from your PIN, and that key never leaves your phone — so we genuinely cannot recover them for you, and nor can anyone who compromises us. That is the whole point of the design, and it is the one place where it costs you something. If you are still signed in on a device, change your PIN from Edit profile while you still have access. If you are locked out, write to us and we will help you clear the account so you can start fresh.
Is there a feed or a chat?
Neither, on purpose. Squawk is a list of who is nearby right now, built to be read in about three seconds. There is no timeline, no likes, and no messaging — when you want to say something, it hands you to your own phone, messages, or email app.
Is there a map?
You get a map when you are dropping your own beacon — you pick your city or venue on it, and it shows the hexagon you are about to broadcast so you can see exactly how precise it is. What you do not get is a map of other people. Your contacts appear as a list, never as pins being tracked across a map, because the whole architecture is built so nobody can plot anyone.
Not out yet.
Squawk is not yet in the App Store or on Google Play. There is no mailing list to join — we would rather not hold your email before you have an account. Check back, or write to us if you want to talk.
squawk@jamisontech.com