Your own operator profile
What other operators see when they click your callsign — and how picture publishing works, including how to keep everything local.
Your profile card is what other operators see when they click your callsign on the heard list or the map. Fill it in once; the app publishes it and keeps it fresh.
Setting it up
Open your profile from the app (your callsign at the top of the rail) and fill in what you like: name, QTH, locator, rig, antenna, website, a short bio, and an avatar picture.
Two of those matter beyond decoration:
- Locator — this is one of the two places the app reads your grid square from. Set it here and the map, distance calculations and your CQ all use it.
- Avatar — uploaded to the service and shown wherever your callsign appears with a profile.
Your published pictures
By default, pictures you send and receive are published to your profile’s gallery — that’s what makes operator profiles and the shared feed interesting. The full history backfills the first time publishing runs, then each new picture follows.
To keep everything local: untick “publish my pictures” in Settings. Nothing further is uploaded, and this is the honest meaning of the setting — it’s opt-out, on by default.
When it updates
The profile re-publishes shortly after you save changes and refreshes periodically while the app runs — no manual “sync” needed.
New to Open Signal?
Start with the overview — what it does, the honest status, and how the pieces fit together.