Anchor AlarmBasic UI — the chrome around every screen
A few controls float above every tab. Learn them once and they work
everywhere.
The tab bar
Ten tabs let you switch surfaces:
the leading edge.
Each tab is identified by an icon — anchor for SafeAnchor, antenna
(📡) for Remote, dolphin for Merconi, pixel octopus for Jules,
gear for Settings, and so on. Tap any tab to switch.
A sidebar toggle (the sidebar.left icon) at the top opens or hides a
menu listing all tabs with their full names — useful before you have
memorized the icons. A search affordance opens the
[Command Palette](#command-palette). On iPhone portrait the search button
sits inline in the top tab bar, immediately before the SeaTracker pill —
so reaching for search and the chart is one gesture. In landscape it's a
magnifier at the top of the side strip.
A small badge on the Store tab shows how many of your installed
regions have updates waiting.
Menu in the side panel (landscape & iPad)
In landscape (and on iPad) the map opens a resizable side panel
on the right edge. There the menu lives inside that panel as its home
screen — the separate left drawer and its toggle are not shown, because the
panel already gives the menu a permanent place with far more room. Tapping a
feature on the chart (a harbour, a vessel, a legend) slides its detail in over
the menu; Back returns you to the menu. Collapse the panel with the
chevron to reclaim the full map; the thin rail that remains re-opens it.
In portrait on iPhone, and on iPad held in portrait, there is no side
panel, so the menu stays in the familiar left drawer opened by the
sidebar.left toggle described above.
Route planning & Simulator dock here too
In landscape, panels that would otherwise cover the bottom of the chart
move into this same right side panel, so the map stays clear:
the depth / wind / wave / speed graphs, and the route actions) fills the
side panel instead of a bottom sheet. The menu is hidden while you plan and
returns when you leave Route mode or minimise the panel.
the simulator is running.
In portrait both still appear as draggable bottom sheets over the chart.
The sidebar header
The top of the sidebar carries a few quick links above the tab list:
jumps to the Store subscriptions.
AnchorQueen, so it works with no signal at all; it includes the release
notes for this version and for earlier ones. See
to you (and the subtitle reflects open conversations), tapping straight
into the thread. Opens the in-app feedback flow where you can
report a bug or request a feature, attach a screenshot, and track the
status of everything you've submitted (Open / In progress / Resolved /
Closed) — with the team's replies and your own follow-ups in one thread.
The same screen is reachable from the SafeAnchor → Radar menu — see
Live Discover — what you've collected
On the map tabs the sidebar opens with a LIVE DISCOVER section. As you
pan the chart, AnchorQueen pulls nautical objects from online services —
lights, buoys, beacons, harbours & marinas, anchorages, dangers, landmarks,
and wrecks — and keeps them as you go.
Each row shows two numbers, e.g. Lights · 400 · +45:
(since the app launched; objects already cached from a previous run are
not counted).
A +N chip next to the pulsing LIVE DISCOVER header sums the session
total across every category — your "collected so far" tally.
Tap a row's +N badge to open the list of just those newly-collected
objects, sorted by distance. Tap any entry to see its full detail or swipe
to save it as a waypoint. (The AIS Vessels row shows a live count only —
vessels come and go, so there is no session tally.)
Reordering the tabs
You can put the tabs in any order you like:
its new position.
Tap Reset in the top-right corner at any time to restore the original
order. Your arrangement is saved automatically and survives closing the app.
The top header (map tabs)
On the three map tabs (SeaTracker, Capt's Notebook, Merconi) a
slim header rides over the chart with the tab's name, breadcrumb of your
current location, and quick actions for chart style and layers.
Map camera controls
On any map tab a vertical cluster of glass buttons sits on the trailing edge,
top to bottom:
when that point is over water, so you can sail a fake boat from there;
fills orange while Simulator Mode is active, tap again to end it.
locked on your boat.
looking. Opens a small panel suggesting the chart region that covers the
current view, the one covering your GPS position when that differs, the
free worldwide base map while nothing is installed yet — plus an expired
("renew") or "update available" notice when an installed covering chart
needs attention. The button pulses while something is new and calms to
a small dot once you have opened the panel; every entry leads to the
Store. See
Chart downloads for this area.
without leaving the map. The chat opens as a sheet anchored to the
bottom of the screen; drag the handle to resize it smoothly, drag it
down (or tap ✕) to close. To give the conversation maximum room the
sheet skips the Jules header and suggestion chips — both stay on the
zoom.
circle turns solid red while recording.
or, while a route is being followed, stop it. Tapping STOP asks you to
confirm first so a stray helm tap can't drop guidance.
Most buttons appear only where they apply (Add Photo in Capt's Notebook, REC
in Voyage, the route ADD / UNDO / DEL trio while you place waypoints), so the
column never shows controls you can't use.
Data tools — crosshair, ruler, clean export, and layers — live in a separate
[QuickActions panel](#clean-export) at the bottom-right, not in this camera
column. There is no audio-mute control on the chart.
The MOB button
The MOB button is the most important control on the chart — a black-glass
circle with a red outline and a red MOB label, sitting mid-cluster (just
below Search and SIM) so it's always in the same thumb-reach band as zoom and
recenter. One tap:
Use it the instant a person or object goes over the side. It works on every
map tab. The button greys out while a Man Overboard incident is already
active, so you can't fire a second one by accident.
The full return flow — the MOB return HUD, the hypothermia banner, and the
Real Drill / Cancelled outcomes — is documented in
The GPS HUD
The dark-glass control at the top-left of the chart is the captain's
watchkeeper rail. It starts on one line, stays out of the chart's way, and
opens only when you ask for more.
Tap anywhere on it to cycle:
| State | What you see | Best use |
|---|---|---|
| Minimized | Place, SOG, COG, zoom, LIVE SK, and REC when recording | Normal watch |
| Compact | Location header, passage state, core motion, and live instrument summary | Quick instrument check |
| Expanded | Position, target, range, depth, vessel identity, and trend graphs | Diagnosis and planning |
The next tap after Expanded returns to Minimized.
Read the rail
anchored through drifting, cruising, and fast. A sustained slow creep turns
amber before the dedicated drag alarm has enough movement to fire.
z).not start a Voyage.
Passage state announces itself, then steps aside
The coloured pill naming your passage state — On Land, Anchored,
Sailing, Motoring, At Sea — is news at the moment it changes and
not much use pinned to a one-line rail for the six hours afterwards.
So on the minimized rail it appears for five seconds whenever the state
changes, then fades and hands its width back to the place name. That is why
a long anchorage name reads in full on watch but shortens briefly after you
weigh anchor. Collapsing the HUD from an open state also re-announces it.
The state is never hidden from you: open the HUD and the pill is always
there, next to the place name, for as long as the card is open.
> LIVE SK and REC are independent. Seeing LIVE SK without REC is
normal: instruments are live, but no Voyage is recording.
Expand for position and target
The expanded HUD adds a GPS coordinate chip for the selected live position,
a Target chip for the map crosshair, and BRG / DIST / DEPTH from the
live position to that target.
Long-press either coordinate chip to copy it — the menu offers the marine
formats (DD / DDM / DMS), a geo: URI, an Apple Maps URL, an AnchorQueen
link, and Share…. If you paste a coordinate, a pill appears above the card
with Fly to and Add WP actions.
Identify the Signal K boat
Connection state alone is not a position. The vessel appears only after the
server publishes a fresh, valid self position.
When it does, the HUD and chart use the same top-down hull symbol as Navigation
and SafeAnchor. The hull carries your vessel name and rotates to heading, or
COG when heading is unavailable. Expand the HUD to see the server coordinate,
HDG, COG, SOG, reported accuracy, and DEVICE↔SK—the distance between the
device GPS and boat-server fixes. It reads in metres below 1 km and nautical
miles beyond it.
Tap the vessel row to fly the chart to the boat. If the Captain profile has
vessels but none is active yet, AnchorQueen selects the first one.
Choose which position drives the app
Open Settings → NMEA, choose Signal K, then switch on Signal K
Position under Signal K Stream and tap Apply & Connect.
makes the separation visible when the phone is ashore or away from the boat.
Voyage recording, and SafeAnchor calculations. The K vessel replaces the
device marker instead of drawing a second boat at the same coordinate.
active anchor watch is not left without a position.
SafeAnchor has its own radar presentation rather than the chart's GPS HUD, but
it follows the same selected position authority and uses the same named,
directional vessel symbol.
If the link says connected but the vessel or coordinates are missing, follow
Connected, but no Signal K position.
The Command Palette
The search affordance (see [the tab bar](#tab-bar)) opens a full-screen
Command Palette with two tabs you switch between at the top:
seamarks, and your saved waypoints. It keeps a RECENT history that works
offline, a Clear History action, and a Jules filter chip that shows
only the searches Jules ran for you.
you can jump straight to a setting without remembering which tab it lives
on.
With the box empty, the Features tab shows the onboarding-hint features as
a built-in tour of what the app can do.
Legend panels
Each chart layer can open a legend panel with its own toggles, and each
panel can be minimized to a single pill button on the Region Button Bar —
a vertical glass capsule pinned to the bottom-left of the map — so you
choose what you see without clutter.
The bar carries one pill per active category:
It auto-hides any category whose viewport count is zero, so empty waters don't
clutter the rail; pan back to populated water and the pills reappear. Tap a
pill to see a category-name tooltip, and collapse the whole bar to a chevron
when you want the map edge clear.
Sub-mode bars (bottom)
Several tabs have a frosted-glass pill bar at the bottom showing the tab's
sub-modes:
The selected sub-mode is highlighted. Tap a pill to switch instantly.
QuickActions & clean export
A separate glass panel at the bottom-right of the chart holds the data
tools (not the camera tools):
DEPTH to that point.
Some chart shots need to be saved without app chrome on top. Tapping Clean
removes the tab bar, sidebar, legend panels, and the rest of the overlays, and
swaps the panel to show two export buttons: PDF and Image. The title
block and the data-source attribution are rendered into the exported PDF or
PNG — they are part of the saved file, not an always-on overlay you see on
screen. Tap Clean again to bring the chrome back.
If something goes wrong
landscape lay the chrome out differently. The
[tab bar](#tab-bar) moves to the side in landscape.
SeaTracker, Capt's Notebook, or Merconi to use it.