App settings

Settings holds the options that apply to every survey: how often to scan, where the location comes from, battery behavior, the look of the app, and a few fleet options. What a survey records and where the data goes are chosen on the Survey tab, not here.

Open Settings in either of two ways:

• Tap the gear in the top bar of the Survey tab.
• Go to More > Settings (“Scan rates, location, battery”).

The page is split into groups, in this order: Survey, Phone, Destinations, Watchlist, Map and lookups, Fleet, and Device IDs. Changes take effect as soon as you make them; there is no Save button on the page.

Set by your organization

On a phone managed by an organization, a row the organization sets keeps the organization’s value and shows Set by your organization. Tapping it explains why instead of changing it, with See all (opens Organization settings) and Use my own settings. The last column in the tables below names the managed configuration key for each row that can be locked this way. See Managed configuration (MDM).

Survey

Row	Default	What it does	Managed key
Start survey automatically	Off	”Starts the survey when the app opens and when the phone restarts”. The survey that starts is your current setup on the Survey tab.	auto_start_survey
Scan rates	Cellular 5 s · Wi-Fi 15 s · Bluetooth 30 s · GNSS 45 s	Opens the Scan rates sheet with one field per scan type, plus the device status message interval (120 s). See Scan rates.	One key per interval, for example wifi_scan_interval_seconds
Include neighbor cells	On	On: “All nearby cells (serving and neighbor) are included in logging and streaming”. Off: “Only serving (registered) cells are logged and streamed, reducing record volume”.	include_neighbor_cells
Include phone state with cellular	On	On: “Phone state logging starts and stops with cellular logging”, so a survey that records Cellular also records Phone state. Off: “Phone state logging is started on its own”, and you pick Phone state separately on the Survey tab.	auto_include_phone_state_with_cellular

Start survey automatically acts when the phone restarts and each time the app is opened fresh (once per app launch, not when you switch back to an app that is still running or turn the phone). Unless an organization shapes the survey on the phone, it starts the survey on every fresh launch, even if you stopped the survey the last time you used the app. To keep a stopped survey stopped, turn the setting off. On a phone where an organization shapes the survey, a survey you stop stays stopped until the phone restarts or the organization changes its configuration; see Managed configuration (MDM).

When you turn on Start survey automatically, the app asks for what starting on its own needs:

• If your current setup records Call records, it first asks for the call records permissions.
• Otherwise, if background location is not granted yet, it explains why it needs background location (to start at boot) and sends you to Android’s settings to choose Allow all the time. See Required permissions.

Phone

Row	Default	What it does	Managed key
Location source	All	Fused, GNSS, Network, or All. Chooses where the location stamped on each record comes from. See Location source.	location_provider
Pause scanning on low battery	Off	A slider from Off to 95 % in steps of 5. When the battery drops to the chosen level or below, scanning pauses, and it resumes once charging brings it back above that level. The summary reads “Off” or “Pauses at N% battery”.	battery_threshold_percent
Battery optimization	Shows the live status	Opens Android’s request to stop optimizing the app. The summary says either “Battery optimization is off, so surveys keep running” or “Tap to turn off battery optimization so surveys keep running”. See Battery optimization.	None
Keep the screen on while recording	On	”Anywhere in the app, so a glance shows the survey is still running”.	None
Theme	System default	System default, Light, or Dark. Applies to the whole app right away.	None
Accent color	Navy	Nine accents: Navy, Sky, Slate, Graphite, Teal, Indigo, Violet, Green, and Orange. The app recolors as soon as you pick one, without a restart.	None
Measurement units	Metric	”Metric (m, km, km/h)” or “Imperial (ft, mi, mph)”.	None

Destinations

Row	What it does	Managed key
NS Analytics	Opens the NS Analytics page (“Manage NS Analytics connection and device registration”). See NS Analytics.	allow_ns_analytics (false blocks it)
OpenCelliD and BeaconDB uploads	Opens Upload settings for the Community databases: Ask before each upload, Retry failed uploads, New tower alerts (off by default), Upload automatically, Upload on Wi-Fi only (shown while Upload automatically is on), the OpenCelliD.org and BeaconDB options, and Delete all data waiting to be uploaded. See Community databases.	allow_external_data_upload (must be true on a managed phone)
Streaming queue limit	The most records that may wait to be sent to an MQTT broker or gRPC server. Default 20000. See below.	streaming_queue_limit

When an organization blocks NS Analytics or the community databases, the row reads “Turned off by your organization”. Unlike other locked rows, Override organization settings does not lift these two blocks, so the lock sheet does not offer Use my own settings for them.

Streaming queue limit

Records wait in a queue while the broker or server is slow or unreachable. When the MQTT queue reaches the limit:

• If MQTT is the only active destination, scanning pauses until the queue drains (the Survey tab shows “Paused: MQTT broker unreachable”).
• If another destination is also active (Log files, gRPC, NS Analytics, or the Community databases), scanning keeps going and new MQTT messages are dropped until the queue drains.

The gRPC stream drops records when its queue is full.

Entering the value:

• 0 turns the limit off, so the MQTT queue is unbounded (the gRPC queue still stops at 20,000). The app first asks “Turn off the queue limit?”, because an unbounded queue can run the phone out of memory. Cancel puts back the previous value.
• A value above 50,000 asks “High queue limit”, with Use recommended (20,000) or Keep value.
• Values above 100,000 are treated as 100,000. Negative numbers are not accepted.

Watchlist

Row	Default	What it does	Managed key
Watchlist alerts	Off	On: “Watching for your saved networks to trigger alerts”. See Wi-Fi watchlist.	None
Stream over MQTT	On	”While connected to an MQTT broker, watchlist matches and your watched networks (including labels) are sent to the broker”.	watchlist_stream_enabled

Map and lookups

Row	Default	What it does	Managed key
Map settings		Opens Map settings (“Screen, zoom buttons, coverage circles and colors”). See Map settings.	None
Manufacturer lookup	On	”Identifies device makers from MAC address prefixes. Sends observed 24-bit OUI prefixes to the Network Survey service. No scan data is stored.” See OUI lookup.	oui_lookup_enabled
SSID exclusion list		Opens the list of Wi-Fi network names left out of saved and uploaded data. See SSID exclusion list.	None

Fleet

Row	Default	What it does	Managed key
Let other apps start and stop surveys	On	Lets other apps start and stop surveys through the Intent API. When off, start and stop requests from other apps are ignored.	allow_intent_control
Organization settings		Shown only on a managed phone. “Everything your organization sets on this phone”, read only.
Override organization settings	Off	Shown only on a managed phone. On: “Using your own settings instead of your organization’s”. Off: “Your organization manages survey settings on this phone”. See what the override lifts.

Device IDs

Row	What it shows
Device serial number	The Android ID Android assigns to the app on this phone. Network Survey uses it as the device serial number in every record. Tap the row to copy it.
App instance ID	The Firebase App Instance ID. Only in the Google Play (regular) build; the CDR build has no Firebase and no such row. Tap to copy.

Android keeps the device serial number the same when you reinstall the same build. It changes after a factory reset, it is different in a work profile, and it can change when you switch to a build signed with a different key (for example between the Google Play build and a CDR build from another source). Records from before and after such a switch then carry different serial numbers.

Settings that moved or were removed in 2.0

• Log file type is gone: CSV is the only log file format.
• The log rollover size is now Start a new file every on the Log files page (More > Log files).
• The per-type auto start switches were replaced by the one Start survey automatically switch.

See Upgrading from 1.x for the full list.

Related

• Scan rates
• Location source
• Managed configuration (MDM)
• Survey tab