Preferences
Theme, units, update checks, and message length
The Preferences page collects the small per-station knobs that don’t belong anywhere else: how the UI looks, what units it uses, whether to phone home for new releases, and whether to allow longer-than-spec APRS messages.
Theme
Pick a theme from the THEME selector. Graywolf
ships with a default light palette (orange primary, green accent,
strong solid badges). Want your own colour scheme? See
graywolf/web/themes/README.md in the source tree for
how to drop one in via pull request.
Updates
Check for updates from GitHub tells graywolf to
contact github.com once a day to see whether a newer
release is out. When it finds one, the About page surfaces
it. Turn this off for offline stations, or if you don’t want
your station’s IP showing up in GitHub’s logs.
Long messages
Allow long APRS messages lifts graywolf’s 67-byte cap on outbound messages, letting you send up to 200 characters. Some receiving clients silently truncate or drop anything past 67 bytes, so leave this off unless you’ve confirmed your contacts can decode the longer form. See Messaging for the full picture.
Unit System Toggle
Open Settings → Preferences in the sidebar and flip the Use metric units toggle. Every page that shows altitude, distance, or speed updates instantly.
| Measurement | Imperial | Metric | API Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Altitude | feet (ft) | meters (m) | meters |
| Distance | feet / miles (ft, mi) | meters / kilometers (m, km) | statute miles |
| Speed | miles per hour (mph) | kilometers per hour (km/h) | knots |
Short distances are shown in smaller units for readability: under 0.1 mi shows feet in Imperial mode, under 1 km shows meters in Metric mode.
Where Units Appear
| Page | What Changes |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | GPS altitude, station speed, and packet distance in the live feed |
| Logs | Packet distance column |
| Beacons | Altitude input supports feet or meters with an inline unit selector |
Beacon Altitude Input
When editing a beacon with a fixed position, the altitude field has a small ft / m selector next to the input. This defaults to your global unit preference but can be changed per-entry. The value is always stored and sent to the API in feet, so switching units only affects what you see in the form — the transmitted APRS packet is unaffected.
- Leave the field blank to omit altitude from the beacon
- Negative values are accepted (e.g. −86 m for Death Valley)
- Switching the unit selector converts the current value in-place
Persistence
The unit preference is stored in your browser’s localStorage
under the key units-system. It persists across page
reloads and browser restarts but is per-browser — if you use
a different browser or device you’ll need to set it again.
The default is Imperial.