Tetracom Help — Android
generic Android guide (any manufacturer)
This is the generic guide. If you know your phone’s
brand, the manufacturer-specific page (Samsung, Google Pixel,
OnePlus, etc.) has the exact menu paths for your phone’s
Settings. Tap All phones at the top to pick.
Keep Tetracom from being killed when your screen is off
Android by default suspends apps within ~30 seconds of the screen turning off. Tetracom needs a couple of one-time settings changes to stay connected so blurts arrive immediately.
Step 1 — turn on Tetracom’s “Stay connected” toggle
- Open Tetracom.
- Tap the gear / settings icon at the top right.
- Scroll to the Connection section.
- Turn ON Stay connected when phone is locked.
- Confirm the popup. A small notification appears in your status bar saying “Tetracom is listening” — that’s the persistent badge that keeps the app alive.
Step 2 — allow Tetracom to run in the background
- Open Android Settings.
- Go to Apps → Tetracom → Battery (path varies by manufacturer; sometimes it’s Apps → Tetracom → Background usage).
- Set the Battery option to Unrestricted (or the equivalent “Allow background activity” toggle).
Step 3 — turn off Adaptive Battery for Tetracom
Adaptive Battery is an ML feature that learns “you don’t use this app much” and pre-emptively suspends it. For an always-on comm app this is exactly the wrong behavior.
- Settings → Battery → Adaptive Battery
- Either turn it off entirely (recommended), or add Tetracom to the “Don’t restrict” / “Never sleep” list. Wording varies by phone.
If your phone is a Samsung / Xiaomi / Huawei: the
above isn’t enough. Those manufacturers add their own
background killer on top of Android. Open the manufacturer
page from All phones for the extra steps.
Permissions you need to grant
Tetracom asks for these the first time you use the relevant feature. If you tapped “Don’t allow” by mistake, re-grant via Android Settings.
- Microphone — to record voice blurts (push-to-talk) and the “Record from mic” notification sound option.
- Notifications — to show the always-on “Tetracom is listening” status notification and any per-blurt alerts you’ve configured.
- Location (optional) — only if you turn on “Send my location with messages” in Settings.
Common questions
- Why isn’t the connection staying alive even with “Stay connected” on?
- Almost always a manufacturer-specific battery optimizer overriding the foreground service. Open your phone-brand page (top of this page) for the exact toggle paths. Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei are the worst offenders.
- The notification sound plays at the wrong volume.
- Tetracom routes notification sounds through the OS’s Notifications volume slider (not Media or Ring). Press a volume key, tap the dropdown, and adjust the Notifications row.
- I get the persistent “Tetracom is listening” notification but it’s annoying.
- Two options. First, you can hide it visually — long-press the notification → turn off “Show notifications” for the “Tetracom — running” channel — but only if your phone supports per-channel suppression while keeping the foreground service alive (Samsung does, stock Android does, some others don’t). Second, turn off Stay connected when phone is locked in Settings — but then the connection drops when the screen turns off, and blurts queue server-side until you next open the app.
- How do I uninstall and start over?
- Long-press the Tetracom icon on your home screen, tap Uninstall. Re-install via the Download button at the top of this page. Note: uninstalling deletes your private keys, so you cannot decrypt any blurts that were queued for you while offline. All your contacts will need to re-approve you on next install.
- I have multiple identities — how do they work with notifications?
- Notification settings are per-installation, not per-identity. All identities use the same behavior + sound. Per-contact overrides ARE per-identity (the override map lives inside each identity’s state). So if Bob_work and Bob_home both have a contact named Alice, you can override Alice’s notification independently in each.