Tetracom — SOS & your Safety Circle

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SOS lets you alert your Safety Circle — the group of people you would want reached in an emergency — with one deliberate action. Everyone in your circle gets a private alert with your location, and they can let you know they saw it. You start it, you can stop it, and no one else can turn it on for you.

Set up your SOS group first. SOS goes to your SOS Group (your Safety Circle) — the trusted people you want reached in an emergency. If you have not made one yet, see Setting up your SOS group below: it takes a few taps right on the Contacts tab.

Setting up your SOS group

Your SOS Group is the group of trusted people your SOS alerts go to — it is your Safety Circle. You set it up directly on the Contacts tab, choosing exactly who is in it.

Open the Contacts tab. Near the top you will see an SOS Group (Safety Circle) row. Tap it to open the section (it stays tucked away until you do, so it does not crowd your contacts).
Tap Set up (or Edit, if you already have one).
Select the contacts you want in your SOS group — tick each trusted person. You can give the group a name, or leave the default (“SOS Group”).
(Optional) Tick “Record & transmit sound every 15 seconds” if you want an active SOS to automatically record and send short audio clips to this circle. Leave it un-ticked to send audio only when you hold the push-to-talk button or volume-up. Either way, this only does anything once you also switch on “SOS audio evidence” in Settings — see Sending audio to your circle.
Tap Create (or Save). That group is now your SOS group.

To change who is in it later, tap Edit and add or remove members, then save. To remove it entirely, tap Clear.

You can only have one SOS group at a time — it is the single circle your SOS alerts and (if you turn it on) audio are sent to. Setting up a new one replaces the old one.

You can only pick people who are already your contacts. If someone is missing, add them first with Add a contact on the Contacts tab, then come back and edit your SOS group.

Send an SOS

Open Tetracom. On the main (Talk) screen, tap the small SOS button — it opens into the large “SOS — alert my safety circle” button. (Opening it does not send anything yet; if you tapped it by mistake, tap the × to close it again.)
Tap the large SOS button. Tetracom asks you to confirm — “Send an SOS to ‘your circle’?” — so it can never go out by accident.
Tap Send SOS to send it. This is the moment the alert actually goes out — there is no countdown and nothing fires on its own; the SOS is sent only when you tap this button.
If you did not mean to, tap Cancel instead and nothing is sent.
Once you tap Send SOS, Tetracom alerts everyone in your Safety Circle. Each person gets their own private message with your location.

Because the SOS only goes out when you tap Send SOS, there is no timer racing against you — take the moment you need, then confirm or cancel.

If you have not chosen a Safety Circle yet, Tetracom asks you to pick one rather than guessing — it will never fire an SOS at a group you did not choose.

While an SOS is active

For as long as your SOS is running:

On the Talk screen you see a small red “SOS ON” pill next to a message that stays on screen the whole time — “SOS mode on — alerting ‘your circle’” — so you always know it is running. The pill is compact so it does not take over the screen, but the “SOS mode on” message never goes away while the SOS is active.
A clear “SOS active — tap to stop” notification also stays in your status bar so it is impossible to miss, even if you leave the app.
Your location is shared with your Safety Circle and refreshed from time to time, so the people you trust can find you. This happens only while the SOS is active.
People in your circle can acknowledge your SOS, and you can see who has. Their replies come back to you, not to the whole circle.

If location permission is off or no position is available, your SOS still goes out — it just will not include a location.

Sending audio to your circle

Tetracom can let your Safety Circle hear what is happening during an SOS by sending them short audio clips. This is off by default and only ever happens when you turn it on — nobody can listen in remotely.

Turn it on first. Open Settings and switch on “SOS audio evidence”. While this is off, an SOS never records any audio, no matter how your SOS group is set up.

You choose how audio is sent when you set up your SOS group (see Setting up your SOS group), with one option: “Record & transmit sound every 15 seconds”. There is no pop-up question when you start an SOS — it just follows what you chose in setup.

Option ON — automatic. While an SOS is running, Tetracom records the area around you automatically in 15-second clips and sends each one to your circle. You do not have to do anything else.
Option OFF — you send it (the default). Tetracom records only while you hold a button — just like normal push-to-talk, but silent and sent to your circle. Press and hold the big push-to-talk button (the microphone image on the Talk screen), or the phone’s volume-up key, then let go to send. If you keep holding past 15 seconds, it is sent in 15-second pieces and keeps recording.

You can change this any time: edit your SOS group and tick or un-tick “Record & transmit sound every 15 seconds”.

Recording is completely silent on your phone. There is no beep, tone, or shutter sound — pressing the push-to-talk button, the microphone image, or volume-up makes no noise — so it will not give you away if you are hiding. (Your phone’s own small “microphone in use” dot may still show; that is the phone, not Tetracom, and cannot be turned off.)

The clips are end-to-end encrypted to your circle, just like your alert — Tetracom’s servers cannot hear them. Each clip you send is added to your SOS record.

Before you rely on this: recording people can be subject to consent laws that vary by place. For your own or a controlled deployment that is your call; a public app-store release of this feature still needs a legal review first.

Stopping an SOS

Stop is always close at hand. End an SOS either way:

Open Tetracom and tap the red “SOS ON” pill. It opens a “Turn SOS messaging off?” question with two choices — Cancel (keep the SOS on) or Yes, turn off (end it). Your SOS is turned off only when you tap Yes, turn off; tapping Cancel leaves it running.
Or tap Stop SOS on the ongoing notification.

When you turn it off, your Safety Circle is told the SOS has ended, and your location stops being shared.

You will not turn it off by accident. When you tap the SOS ON pill, the Cancel and Yes, turn off buttons appear a good distance away from where your finger just was, and they ignore taps for a moment right after they appear — so the same tap that opened the question cannot slip through and turn your SOS off. (The Send SOS confirmation when you start an SOS has the same protection, so an SOS is never sent or stopped by a stray double-tap.)

When someone sends you an SOS

If you are in someone’s Safety Circle and they send an SOS, you get an alert showing who it is from and where they are (when a location is included), and whether the SOS is still active or has ended. You can Acknowledge it to let them know you have seen it — your acknowledgement goes back to that person only.

Your SOS record

Every SOS you send is recorded on your phone: when it started and stopped, what was sent, and to whom. This is your own record — useful if you ever need to review what happened. It is kept on your device only.

Privacy & control

Only you can start an SOS. Nothing anyone sends you can turn on SOS on your phone — there is no remote trigger.
It is always visible while running — the ongoing notification, plus an on-screen “SOS mode on” message — and always stoppable (tap the SOS ON pill and confirm, or use the notification).
End-to-end encrypted. Each alert is encrypted just for one circle member, exactly like a one-to-one message. Tetracom’s servers cannot read it or see who is in your circle.
Emergency location is temporary. Your location is shared with the circle only while the SOS is active, then stops.

Audio is off until you turn it on. SOS never records audio unless you switch on “SOS audio evidence” in Settings, and even then it follows your SOS group setting — automatic every 15 seconds, or only when you hold the push-to-talk button / mic image / volume-up — see Sending audio to your circle. Recording is silent, encrypted to your circle, and stoppable by ending the SOS.

Related: “Ask every time” location

Separate from SOS, Tetracom can ask you each time a contact requests your location, instead of sharing automatically. See Location requests — Ask every time.

Still stuck?

If something here does not match what you see, or you hit a problem this page does not cover, email help@tetracom.me. Please include your phone make and model, your Android version, and the Tetracom app version so we can help faster.

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