User guide
Using Chirp
Where everything is, what it does, and the settings worth knowing. New here? Start with setup.
Getting around
- iPhone and phones: the bar at the bottom has Dashboard, Recordings, Live Detect, Life List and Notifications. ⋯ holds everything else: Field Guide, Statistics, Night Calls and Notes; admin pages; then My Profile, Settings and What's New.
- Computer: the same pages are in the sidebar on the left.
- Several sites? Switch between them from the site name at the top of the page.
- Most sections fold up with the arrow in their corner. Chirp remembers how you left them.
Dashboard
Today at a glance: what's singing now, today's species with photos, streaks, yard diversity and recent notes.
- Tap the live card to open that recording; tap a species for its profile.
- Tap Today's or This Week's in the summary heading to switch period.
- Two styles: Simplified (the essentials) or Detailed (charts, streaks, top species). Change it in Settings → Appearance.
Recordings
Every clip your station captured, newest first, with its spectrogram (a picture of the sound: pitch up the side, time along the bottom).
- Filter (top right): species, confidence, station, time of day (dawn, morning, afternoon, evening, night or your own hours) and Saved. The calendar narrows to 24 hours, 7, 30 or 90 days, or a custom range.
- Tap a recording for the player, spectrogram and every bird found in it. Tap a species row to play just that call.
- Enhance: Original, Enhanced (cuts traffic and wind rumble and reduces background noise; the Low cut slider sets the cutoff) or AI (neural denoising, if your site turned on AI Enhance). They only change what you hear.
- Save keeps a recording out of automatic cleanup: it's never archived or deleted on a schedule.
- AI Second Opinion (if your site turned it on) checks a tricky call against the spectrogram.
- Archive deletes just the audio to save space and keeps the detections; Delete removes everything.
- Upload adds an audio file you recorded elsewhere.
Live Detect
Identify birds through your phone's microphone, wherever you are.
- Open Live Detect and tap Start. Allow the microphone the first time.
- Hold the phone toward the sound. Species appear with a photo and confidence as they're heard.
- Tap Stop. Save the session as a recording if you want to keep the audio; the location is saved if you allowed it.
- Have a station? Pick it instead of Phone mic to listen through the yard's microphone from anywhere.
- Volume boost and the rumble slider only change what you hear, never what's identified.
- Live Detect needs your site's address to start with
https://.
Life List
Every species your site has recorded, with first-heard date and counts. Sort by detections, name or first seen. Download exports a CSV for eBird (choose eBird Record Format when importing).
Bird profiles
Tap any species anywhere to open its profile: photos, description, example calls, range maps, how common it is here this month, your site's recordings of it and shared notes.
- Notify me sends an alert every time it's heard, or once a day.
- Add your own photos and notes; other members of your site see them.
Field Guide
Birds likely near you right now, from eBird data for your site's location. Filter by month or season; "Detected here" marks ones your station has heard. Needs the site's location and an eBird key (admins: Integrations).
Notifications
- The Notifications tab keeps every alert; tap one to open the recording or journal. Delete one, or clear them all.
- Choose what you get in Settings → My Notifications: new species, watched birds, the daily digest, the Daily Journal and the Sunday Weekly Journal, by push and by email.
- Admins: turn on Stations → Station offline to hear when a station stops reporting for 15 minutes (crash, power or Wi-Fi; change the delay in Settings → Alerts & Email), and when it's back.
- No alerts on iPhone? iPhone Settings → Chirp → Notifications must be on.
Notes, Statistics, Night Calls and the digest
- Night Calls (if your site turned on night flight calls): short calls migrating birds give overhead at night, found by Nighthawk. Pick Night, Week or Month; calls are grouped by family (all warblers together) and each group opens to its calls. Tap a spectrogram for the call's own page with a larger spectrogram and the audio.
- Notes: every note on any bird or recording, in one list. Use ⋯ on someone's note to report it or block them.
- Statistics: patterns by month, hour and season, top species and diversity over time.
- Daily digest: a summary of the day's birds, by push and email at the times your site sets. Each bird's play button opens its recordings.
Your settings Everyone
Open Settings (in ⋯ on phones). Use the search box to jump to any setting. Changes show a Save bar at the bottom.
| Tab | What's there |
|---|---|
| My Notifications | Your push and email alerts, journals and watched birds. |
| Appearance | Theme (25 built in, or make your own), Simplified or Detailed Dashboard, whether cards start open, installing the app. |
Site settings Admins
| Tab | What to set |
|---|---|
| General | Location and time zone first: they decide which species are expected and when the digest goes out. Also the site's web address and what everyone sees. |
| Detection | Detection model: BirdNET v3 (default; owls must hoot at their pitch, and need a higher score in daylight) or BirdNET 2.4, with v3's minimum confidence. BirdNET 2.4 Settings (confidence, overlap, sensitivity) appear when 2.4 is the model. Also Min. confidence display (hides weak detections without deleting them), night-caller thresholds for owls, server re-analysis, recording limits and what recordings open in (Playback: Enhance). |
| Bats | Bat echolocation detection on an ultrasonic mic, species ID and wobble removal. |
| Alerts & Email | Daily digest push and email times, the email (SMTP) server with test buttons, and iPhone Push (shows how pushes are sent; paste a relay token on your own server). |
| Integrations | eBird key (free, for the Field Guide), Haikubox, Bird Buddy and iNaturalist. |
| AI Features | Daily and Weekly Journal, profile summaries, AI Second Opinion and AI Enhance. Off until you add a provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini or a home Ollama server). |
| Storage & Backup | Disk use, automatic archive and delete after N days (saved recordings are skipped), backups and restore, refreshing bird data. |
| Access & Security | Sign-in options, device keys, the activity log and network (Tailscale). |
| Experimental | Nighthawk night flight calls (listed on the Night Calls page; stations need software 1.4.1), range maps and the sightings heatmap. |
| Diagnostics | Server health, station checks, microphone tests and logs. |
Devices Admins
- Each station shows online status, last heartbeat and its microphones.
- Discover finds stations on the same network; Auto-configure pairs one for you. New Device Key makes a key for manual setup. See connecting a station.
- Push settings to a station, view its live log, open a terminal, and test microphones without visiting the Pi.
People and roles Admins
- Users shows your site's invite code; tap Copy invite to share it. People join as viewers.
- Roles: viewer (browse, notes, Live Detect), submitter (also uploads and iNaturalist), admin (settings, devices, people).
- Activity shows who's been using the site; Logs shows the server's log.
My Profile
- Photo, display name, email and password. One password for your account on every site.
- Device Notifications turns on alerts for this phone or browser.
- Help & Feedback sends us a question, a problem or a feature idea.
- Blocked People and Delete account.
Help
The in-app Tutorial (link at the bottom of the Dashboard) walks through each page with pictures. Setup guide for stations and servers, contact us for anything else, and What's New lists every change.