Finding people nearby for a shared activity
You enjoy a specific thing — chess, cycling, a particular book. Someone nearby is open to the same thing. Signal is the moment you find out.
Temporary · Nearby · Voluntary
Signal lets you temporarily signal that you’re here — and discover nearby signals around you.
You pick an intent, stay visible for a short time, and see what people physically near you are open to. There is no background tracking, no exact coordinates, and no inbox. When the timer ends, the signal is gone.
How it works
How Signal works
A Signal session is short, voluntary, and in person. Here is exactly what happens between the moment you start and the moment the signal fades.
Choose what you want to signal
Pick a duration — 15, 30, or 60 minutes — and write a short, plain-text intent. The intent is not a profile and it is not stored after the timer ends.
Tap “I’m here”
Tap to start the session. Your phone reads an approximate location exactly once and uses it to publish your intent into a coarse radar cell of roughly one kilometre. The exact point is not stored or transmitted.
Stay visible temporarily
Stay visible for the duration you picked. Other active participants in the same radar cell see your intent with whole-meter distance and a quantized direction. They cannot pin where you are.
See nearby signals
See what other people nearby are open to. Tap Stop, or wait for the timer to run out — either way, the session ends and the signal is gone.
What Signal is
Signal is a small mobile radar. You choose a short, voluntary intent — a coffee, a walk, a quiet conversation — and Signal broadcasts it to people who are physically near you and who have done the same.
Signal is not a dating app, not a messaging app, not a map, and not a tracker. It does not follow you across days. The signal you emit has a timer, and when the timer ends, the signal fades.
How the radar works
When you start a session, your phone reads an approximate location once. That approximate point is used to publish your intent into a temporary radar cell of roughly one kilometre.
Other active participants in the same cell see your intent with whole-meter distance and a quantized direction. They do not see your exact coordinates, your profile photo, or anything that would let them pin your movements.
- Whole-meter distance — never more precise than that.
- Quantized direction — coarse sector, not a heading.
- Distance recomputed as you move, so triangulation is not possible.
The privacy model
No background location. No exact coordinates. No profile, no friend graph, no inbox. No analytics, no advertising, no third-party trackers.
The technical privacy choices are described in detail in the Privacy model document.
Privacy in detail →Use cases
Use cases
Signal is built around a specific shape of meeting: short, voluntary, in person, with someone you do not yet know. These are situations where it works.
Letting nearby people know you are around
You are at a café, a coworking floor, a park. You signal a short intent. A neighbour who already has a session sees it and says hi.
Signaling availability temporarily
You have an open hour. You signal it. When the hour ends, the signal ends. There is no inbox waiting for you.
Local spontaneous coordination
A small community — a regulars table, a walking group, a study circle — can use it as a low-overhead way to ask "is anyone around right now?" without a group chat.
Docs
Read the documentation
The docs describe what Signal does today — the permissions it asks for, how the radar cell is computed, and how your own session is required to see others.