In development · Not yet on the App Store
Morse Buddy teaches you the code one character at a time, scores you as you go, and tells you when you have earned the next one. Once you can read it, the same app lets you send it — between two devices, by light, by tone, or on a carrier most adults cannot hear.
The entire listening course is free. No network, no account, no server.
Koch is how operators have been taught for decades, and it is the opposite of a chart on a wall. You start with two characters at full speed and earn the next one. Forty in all: the alphabet, the digits, and four punctuation marks.
Ninety percent moves you up. You get a score, a breakdown of which characters let you down, and a clear view of what you are working towards — instead of an endless stream that promotes you when you are not looking.
Being asked to identify a sound you have never heard is a coin toss, and a poor way to meet something. You hear the new one first, then the round starts.
Practise against the tone, or against the light. It is the same code either way, but reading flashes and reading tones do not feel alike, so the two are scored separately and some badges ask for each.
Practise at 10, 15, 20 or 25 WPM. Changing speed is free and stays free — the method’s answer to a plateau is to slow down and keep the same characters, so a learner who cannot change speed has no move to make.
Sending practice puts a paddle on the screen and marks what you key. Not against a stopwatch — against itself. A dah should be about three times a dit, and that ratio is what makes a fist another operator can read. Key slowly and evenly and you score full marks.
Listening and sending are separate ladders. Being good at reading does not hand you credit for keying, and they promote independently.
Characters are where this starts, not where it finishes. Phrase practice plays a whole message and asks you to read it — five to a round, four of five to move up, three tiers that grow by length.
Reading a phrase is not reading twenty characters in a row: the ear has to hold a word while the next one arrives. Operators call it head copy, and it is what separates someone who knows the alphabet from someone who can use it. Every phrase uses only the forty the course teaches, and they are things you would really signal — ON MY WAY, NEED HELP, MEET AT THE TRAILHEAD.
Four groups — ten for reading, seven for sending, four for phrases, and ten for how far through the course you are. Each one carries the fastest speed you earned it at, because ten in a row at 25 WPM and ten in a row at 10 are not the same feat.
A reference chart with the characters in play at the top and all fifty-four below. You can open it mid-round, deliberately — a learner who cannot remember will otherwise guess, and a guess teaches less than a look.
Free, permanently: the entire listening course — all forty characters, the rounds, the scoring, the reference chart and the listening badges — plus SOS by camera flash.
One purchase, no subscription: sending practice with your keying scored, phrase practice, free-text messages, the tone and silent carriers, the full signalling speed range, and the strobe beacon. There is no advertising.
One phone sends, the other decodes. The receiver works out the sender's speed for itself, so nobody has to agree on a setting beforehand.
The camera flash blinks Morse. The other phone watches with its camera and decodes.
Line of sight. Decoded at 125 feet outdoors at night with 5× zoom; about 30 feet indoors in daylight.
A 700 Hz audible tone, the traditional Morse pitch. Anyone nearby can hear it.
Carries as far as the phone speaker does, and as far as the room is quiet.
An 18.5 kHz near-ultrasonic carrier, above the hearing range of most adults. Not encrypted — discretion in a quiet room, not secrecy.
About six metres in a quiet room, and far less outdoors. Air absorbs ultrasound.
A rapid emergency beacon, separate from Morse. For being seen and found.
Auto-stops on a timer so it cannot flatten the battery you need for a 911 call.
Measured in the field, decoding full messages rather than just detecting light. The conditions matter more than the numbers, so they stay attached to them.
| Mode | Condition | Decoded at |
|---|---|---|
| Torch | Indoors, daylight | 30 ft |
| Torch | Outdoors at night, no zoom | 35 ft |
| Torch | Outdoors at night, 5× zoom | 125 ft |
| Silent 18.5 kHz | Quiet room | 19 ft(5.8 m) |
| Silent 18.5 kHz | Outdoors, road noise | 7 ft |
Full messages work, not only SOS. NEED HELP AT PIER 9 decoded exactly at 30 feet.
It cannot call 911, it cannot text anyone, and it does not need or use a network. It flashes the camera torch in Morse code, which reaches somebody only if they are already within sight of you and reading it. If nobody is looking, nothing happens.
Use it alongside a phone call, a whistle, or anything else that reaches further — never instead of them. If you have signal, call for help first.
The app says the same thing on a screen you must acknowledge before it can be used, and again permanently on the transmit screen.
Flashing light in roughly the 3–30 Hz band can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy, with peak risk around 15–20 Hz. The risk applies to bystanders and to the person holding the phone, not only to whoever it is pointed at. The app shows a warning before the strobe is used for the first time, and this site says so too rather than leaving it as a surprise.
Read the full safety noticeEvery one of these is a real constraint we would rather you knew before you relied on the app than after.
Morse Buddy is in active development and internal testing on real hardware. It is not on the App Store, there is no release date, and there is no price. When that changes, this page will change with it.
We are looking for TestFlight testers. You will need an iPhone 8 or newer, or an iPad, on iOS 16.4 or later. The learning half needs only that one device; if you want to test signalling too, two devices in one household is ideal.
The Sparky1 mark is a robot dog with a plug for a tail, and it has three dots along its body. In Morse, · · · is the letter S — and the opening of SOS. The bridge from the company mark to this app was already there before anyone went looking for it.