Locked
Enter your passcode to open your circle.
Enter your passcode to open your circle.
This browser is missing WebCrypto or IndexedDB, which Starling needs for its encryption. Update Android System WebView or switch to a current browser, then reopen Starling.
Your people, on your map. Nobody else.
Create a circle, send one link, and watch each other arrive. Nothing about where you are ever leaves your phone in a form anyone else can read. The app lives on Android today; iPhone owners can build the iOS app from source, or watch the demo below.
Invites open in the app, where your circle's secret lives outside the browser. On Android: install the app below, then tap your invite link again and it will join there. On an iPhone: there is no store app yet, so this link only works if you build the iOS app yourself (see the iPhone question below) and paste the link inside its Join screen. The secret in your link never left this device.
Circles now live in the Android app, and the website no longer opens them. The data sits untouched in this browser's storage, encrypted at rest only if you had set a passcode. If you are done with it, erase it.
Your request is sitting on the relay. It waits until the person who invited you next opens Starling and accepts it; read them the number below when they do.
Your numberRead these digits out to whoever invited you. The same number shows next to your request on their phone, and that is how they know it is you asking.
No email, no phone number, nothing to sign. The app generates your keys on your device and never sends them anywhere.
The invite burns after one use. Before it opens, you and your person read a short safety number out loud to each other and check it matches.
Every position is sealed on your phone and opened on theirs. The relay in the middle moves envelopes it cannot open.
Every position is sealed with AES-256-GCM on your device. The relay moves ciphertext it cannot read.
Keys retire every ten minutes and the old ones are destroyed, so even a seized server or a stolen phone cannot read far into the past: a day of scrambled data at most, less for any ten-minute window already gone.
Name a Home, School, or Work and the app tells you who arrived and who left. The server never learns those places exist.
Hold to send SOS to your circle, or open a revocable beacon link that works in any browser. Members also get a heads up when someone's battery is about to die.
The relay deletes every row after 24 hours and keeps no backups, so there is no history sitting around to leak.
An optional passcode and biometric lock encrypt your circle secret at rest. Panic wipe erases the lot instantly, and a duress passcode does it silently if you're ever forced to unlock.
Switch the map background off and the app makes zero requests beyond the relay. Route it through Orbot, Android's Tor app, and the relay never sees your real address.
One for family, one for the friends you split up from at a fair. Separate keys, separate identities, one tap to switch.
GPL licensed, reproducible Android builds, an open protocol, and a relay you can run on your own server.
This is the part most apps do not put on their homepage. Here is the honest line between what a full seizure of the relay's database would get someone, and what it would not.
Read the full threat model for exactly what this means and what it does not.
Yes. No ads, no premium tier, nothing to unlock. It is GPL licensed, so you can also read every line that touches your position.
There is an iOS app you can build yourself: the repository ships a wrapper that holds a real circle, with the honest catch that iOS gives it no background sharing, and installing it means a Mac with Xcode and re-signing every 7 days on a free Apple ID. It is not on the App Store or TestFlight yet. The website itself still does not open circles on purpose: a browser tab is the weakest place to keep a location secret.
Their servers see every position you ever send. Starling's relay cannot see any of them, because they never leave your device unencrypted. There is nothing on the relay worth selling or worth a breach.
Invites are one-time. Opening one starts a safety number check, so the person already in the circle can see it is not who they expected. Anyone you no longer trust can be removed with a re-key that cuts them off for good.
Sharing runs as a foreground service so the OS does not kill it, which does cost some battery. It is the same trade-off any always-on location app makes, and sharing is off until you turn it on.
Yes. The relay is small and open source, and runs on Cloudflare Workers or a plain server behind Apache or nginx. Point the app at your own instance and Munzzyy's relay never sees your traffic at all. Setup for both is documented in the README.
Hold the SOS button and your circle gets an alert at your live position. On their phones it lands as a notification while Starling runs in the background; a phone that is off or has the app fully closed sees it on the next open, because there is no push service to force it awake. You can also open a help beacon, a link that works in any browser, for someone outside your circle, and revoke it the moment you are safe.
No App Store iPhone app yet. No driving reports, speed alerts, or crash detection. No location history older than a day, on purpose. If those are the features you need most, Starling is not your app yet, and finding that out here beats finding it out after you switched.
Sharing keeps running with the screen off, your fingerprint opens the app lock, and a panic wipe clears everything at once. No Google services inside.
The easy way: F-Droid installs Starling and keeps it updated. A new release can take a few days to reach it.
Download the APKServed straight from this site; the same file is on the releases page with its checksum, so you can verify what you installed.
On GrapheneOS or any de-googled phone, add Starling to Tern and it updates itself.
F-Droid ships the same signed APK as GitHub and this site, so you can switch where updates come from without reinstalling.
Not ready to install anything yet? Watch the demo right here first.
Location is blocked
Your browser is blocking location for this site. Allow location in your browser's site settings, then tap Start sharing again.
SOS is armed
Your circle sees an alert at your live position. Tap the check mark above to cancel it and let everyone know you are okay.
Just you here so far
Starling only gets good when your people are on the map. Send them your invite link.
End-to-end encrypted. The relay sees ciphertext only.