Coverage map
Detections with coordinates become circles on an OpenStreetMap layer. Open one device or all of them at once.
Android · Bluetooth LE
See how far the BitChat mesh actually reaches
BitChat Scanner picks up nearby BitChat devices over Bluetooth LE and turns every detection into a coverage map on your phone. No account, no backend, nothing leaves the device.
Android 8.0 and newer
About 1.4 MB
No ads, no trackers
scanning · service f47b5e2d
Every detection lands on the map
Device cards keep the address, signal strength and how many times you have seen it. Where a coordinate was captured, the app draws a coverage circle whose radius follows the signal.
What it does
A focused tool for one job: find BitChat devices around you and remember where they were heard.
Keeps listening after you leave
A started session continues through Android's own filtered BLE subscription. No foreground service and no permanent notification. The system decides the pace, so it is best effort, not a guarantee.
History that stays yours
Up to a thousand recent detections in a local database: first and last seen, signal, counter, service data. It survives restarts and is excluded from cloud backup.
Optional alerts
Turn on a notification when a matching device shows up. It carries the name or address and the signal level, and has a cooldown so one busy device cannot flood you.
Nothing is uploaded
No account, no analytics, no crash reporting, no server of ours. The only network traffic is map tiles from OpenStreetMap when you open a map.
Open source
Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. The repository holds the code, the build workflow and the signed release artifacts, so you can check or build it yourself.
Three steps
From a fresh install to a filling map.
01
Grant the permissions
Bluetooth for the search and precise location, because Android hands out BLE scan results only to an app that holds it. Location Services have to be on.
02
Press Start Scanner
While the app is open it uses a fast callback. Leave it and Android keeps a filtered subscription running in the background until you press Stop.
03
Watch the map fill in
Walk or drive around. Each device gets a card with its own mini map, and the full map shows the whole picture of where the mesh was heard.
Your scans stay on your phone
The app was built so that the interesting data never has anywhere to go. There is no backend to send it to.
Independent tool. BitChat Scanner only listens for the public BLE advertisement of the BitChat service. It does not join the mesh, read messages or connect to anything.
- Detections and coordinates live in a local database on the device
- Excluded from cloud backup and from transfer to a new phone
- No account, no analytics, no advertising identifiers
- Background detections are stored without asking for a fresh position
- Clear the whole log from inside the app whenever you want
- Opening a map downloads tiles from OpenStreetMap, and that is the only outgoing request
Take it for a walk
Download the APK from GitHub Releases and install it on your phone. Free, no registration, no in-app purchases.
Android 8.0+ · Bluetooth LE · precise location · about 1.4 MB