VoxLink 1.3: APRS, accessibility, and a settings overhaul # voxlink-13-aprs-accessibility-and-a-settings-overhaul

VoxLink 1.3 is out. The headline is APRS — VoxLink now speaks APRS-IS, with a live map, station list, messaging, and configurable beaconing — but a lot has happened around it: a full set of accessibility features, a reorganized settings area, Bluetooth audio routing fixes, and on-screen alerts for monitored talkgroup activity.

APRS # aprs

VoxLink is now an APRS client. Connect to APRS-IS with your callsign and passcode and you get:

• A live map (OpenStreetMap) with stations as markers, callsigns labeled under each symbol, and common APRS symbols mapped to Material icons.
• A stations list with a search box, sort by distance / last-heard / callsign, last-heard age pills, an inline movement chip for moving stations, category filter chips with a stale-fade, pull-to-refresh, dense rows, and persisted sort. Tapping a station opens a detail sheet with path, status, course/speed/altitude, and other metadata.
• Messaging — send and receive APRS messages directly from the app.
• Beaconing with two positioning modes: automatic from GPS (with tunable accuracy) or a manual map picker for fixed locations. Each mode has its own settings, and a smart-beacon fallback derives speed from distance/time when the GPS speed channel is unreliable.
• Background operation — the APRS-IS connection (and position stream) is kept alive through the foreground service, so beacons keep going out and incoming traffic keeps flowing when the app isn’t in front.
• Parsing for compressed positions, Mic-E, course/speed/altitude, objects, and items.
• VoxLink now identifies itself with the officially-assigned APVOXL tocall on the APRS-IS network.

The whole feature lives behind a master toggle in Settings, so if you don’t want it, it’s not in your way. UI is localized in English and Portuguese.

Accessibility # accessibility

VoxLink 1.3 ships a dedicated accessibility section with options that make the app usable in tougher conditions:

• Outdoors mode — a larger PTT button with a glanceable outer ring you can hit without looking.
• Huge talker display — 56px callsign, 22px subtitle, for reading at a glance.
• Green screen flash on RX talker start, so you know someone’s transmitting without looking at the indicator.
• Reduce motion — disables the pulsing connection indicator and other ambient animation.
• Haptic strength — Off / Subtle / Strong, scaling all vibration durations across the app.
• TX start/stop vibration cues — a short pulse on TX start, a double-tap on stop.
• High-contrast state colors on the PTT button and talker display.

Monitor activity alerts # monitor-activity-alerts

Monitored talkgroups now surface activity directly in the app:

• A monitor activity banner appears at the top of the PTT screen when a monitored TG goes active. Tap it to switch to that talkgroup.
• OS notifications for talker activity on monitored TGs and for connection drops, with toggles to enable or disable each in the new Notifications section.
• A 5-second idle-coalesce window keeps the banner stable through bursts of short transmissions.

Settings, reorganized # settings-reorganized

The Settings screen had grown into a long scroll. It’s now split into focused sub-screens, all reachable from a clean grouped-card index:

• Transmission (PTT / VOX / TOT)
• Audio
• External PTT
• Notifications
• PTT screen controls
• Accessibility
• Connection
• APRS

Each row uses a right-chevron for navigation. Less hunting, more findability.

Other small additions: a Keep screen on toggle (wired to wakelock), an APRS server picker, and a server export/import flow that uses your share sheet (with a visible warning about the secrets it contains).

Audio # audio

• Bluetooth audio routing fix — the comm-device session lifecycle is now handled properly, which resolves a long-standing class of routing issues with BT headsets. A live audio output picker enumerates devices in real time, auto-reroutes on connect/disconnect when set to Auto, and surfaces a fallback toast when a chosen device disappears.
• User-selectable BT audio mode — pick whether the Bluetooth path uses the voice-call (SCO) profile or the media profile, depending on what your headset does well.
• 48 kHz Opus — the encoder and decoder now run at 48 kHz, improving audio quality.
• RX hardening for background and locked-screen wake-ups, including keeping the RX path warm across QSOs and surviving fast keyup → keydown patterns without missing the start of the next over.
• Android 16 WiFi PSM mitigation — the app holds a multicast lock and runs a 1 Hz UDP heartbeat so the radio doesn’t park itself in power-save mode while backgrounded.
• AudioTrack lifecycle work: recreated after long idle to avoid the stuck-slow-mixer bug, jitter-buffer tail drained on talkerStop to stop clipped overs, zombie playback timers prevented from double-draining, decoder + jitter buffer reset on foreground resume, audio channel taken off the main thread, FAST-mixer hint dropped.
• Several stability fixes around mic leaks in VOX, decoder teardown, and AudioTrack underruns.

Playback improvements # playback-improvements

The audio file playback feature from 1.2 grew up:

• Playlist-based playback with a strip UI for the active entry.
• Pause / resume that preserves the absolute file offset.
• Manual-PTT interrupt — keying up cleanly stops the file.

Nodes & talkgroups # nodes--talkgroups

• The Nodes screen now splits the list by activity on the selected talkgroup, so you can tell who’s actually using the channel right now.
• Scan across talkgroups.
• Per-preset default monitored TGs and arbitrary-TG monitoring.
• Chevron buttons to step through presets on the PTT screen.

Other fixes & polish # other-fixes--polish

• Recordings: swipe-to-delete with a working Undo.
• Servers: first server is auto-activated on add and on load, so the PTT picker always has presets to show.
• Polished active-server hero card and servers dashboard.
• Manage talkgroups directly from the active server menu, and onboard them when adding a new server.
• RX is now torn down cleanly on talkgroup switch, and monitor/scan toggles are persisted across restarts.
• voxlink:// deep links continue to work for provisioning servers via URL or QR.
• A grab bag of smaller stability and translation fixes.

1.3.1 # 131

A short follow-up patch shipped on top of 1.3.0 with a few requested PTT-screen options and one more reliability fix:

• Optional TX / TOT timer row on the PTT screen.
• Optional Quit item in the PTT-screen connection menu, for when you want to fully stop the app instead of backgrounding it.
• Foreground service notification now reflects RX state (and the mediaPlayback FGS type was dropped now that audio routing is handled directly).

Get it # get-it

VoxLink 1.3 is rolling out on the Google Play Store. More details at voxlink.jcalado.com.

If you hit a bug or have an idea, drop into the VoxLink Telegram community. 73.