Free during the beta · Runs in your browser
Your whole shack,
one screen.
ShackOS brings the tools you already reach for — your logbook, QRZ lookups, POTA, PSK Reporter, the DX cluster, solar data and a propagation forecast for your own station — onto one dashboard you arrange yourself. One sign-in, one place your data lives, and every tool aware of the others.
All in one place
Stop running your station across a dozen tabs.
A typical session means a callbook in one tab, a spotting site in another, a solar widget, a logging program and a map. ShackOS puts them side by side — and because they share one logbook and one station profile, they work together. Look up a call and log it from the same card. Tap a POTA spot and the log entry is already filled in. The map already knows your grid square.
QRZ.com
Callsign lookups with your QRZ subscription, and two-way sync with your QRZ logbook.
HamQTH and Callook
Free lookup sources, so lookups still work without a QRZ subscription. Callook covers US calls.
Parks on the Air
Live spots, park search with boundaries on the map, self-spotting, and logs exported in the format POTA accepts.
PSK Reporter
A live map of who is hearing whom, fed by PSK Reporter’s real-time stream.
DX cluster
Spots from DX Summit, HamQTH and DXWatch, with country flags and band and mode filters.
Space weather
Solar flux, K-index and the 3-day outlook from NOAA SWPC and HamQSL, with the age of the data always shown.
ADIF
Import from and export to any logger that speaks ADIF. Duplicates are skipped, not stacked.
AllStarLink Early access
Listen, talk and link your AllStar node from a browser, including with your phone’s screen locked.
Some integrations need your own account with that service (a QRZ subscription for QRZ lookups and logbook sync, for example). ShackOS is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these services.
Modern and intuitive
Software that looks and works like it was made this decade.
A lot of ham radio software still looks like a 1990s dialog box. ShackOS is built for the screens you actually use, with nothing to install and nothing to configure before it is useful.
- Your dashboard, your layout. Pick the cards you want, then drag and resize them. Phones get their own stacked layout.
- Runs anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, iPhone and Android, in any current browser. Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app.
- Ready for the field. POTA logging keeps working with no signal and syncs when you are back in coverage.
- Plain language. Every band condition comes with a word and a reason, and every card says what it is for.
- Nine themes. Including two high-contrast themes and darker night themes for operating with the lights down.
Optional assistant
Help when you want it. Out of the way when you don’t.
Elmer is an AI assistant built into ShackOS. Ask him a question and he answers with your station in mind — your radios and antennas, your grid square, your recent contacts and what the bands are doing right now — instead of generic advice.
- He knows your setup. “Can I work Japan tonight?” gets an answer for your antenna, from your location, on tonight’s conditions.
- He says when he doesn’t know. He is built to admit a gap rather than invent an answer. Like any AI he can still be wrong, so check anything that matters.
- Entirely optional. He waits behind one button. If you never open him, nothing about you is sent to the AI service.
- Your data is not used to train AI. What you send Elmer is used to answer you, and that is all.
Built for every operator
For new hams, seasoned elmers, and operators with disabilities.
ShackOS is designed so that someone licensed last week and someone licensed fifty years ago can both get straight to work — and so can someone using a screen reader.
New to the hobby
Learn while you operate.
- Band conditions explained in plain words, with the reason behind each one
- Step-by-step guides to hunting and activating POTA
- A band guide you can filter by license class, plus Morse practice, Q-codes and phonetics
- Elmer, for the questions you haven’t found an answer to yet
Seasoned operators
Fast, and nothing hidden.
- Keyboard-first logging: type, Tab, Enter
- ADIF in and out, QRZ logbook sync, duplicate detection
- DXCC, WAS and grid-square progress tracked from your log
- A propagation model you can question, which tells you when its data is stale
Accessibility
Usable without sight, and without a mouse.
- A screen-reader mode that rebuilds the dashboard as headings and plain text
- Two high-contrast themes that meet WCAG AAA contrast
- Band conditions always carry a word, never colour alone
- Full keyboard operation, visible focus, and reduced motion on request
Band conditions
The forecast is physics, not a colour wheel.
Band conditions come from an ionosphere model (IRI-2020) run for your own grid square and your own antenna — its height, takeoff angle and feedline loss — rather than a national average with a traffic light bolted on.
Band conditions · example
Every state carries a word as well as a colour. Red–green is the most common colour vision deficiency, and band conditions are exactly where that matters.
Honest about what it knows
It tells you when it’s guessing.
Space-weather data has an age, and the forecast says so. Past three hours old the numbers are marked degraded rather than quoted as current. Where the model has no measurement to stand behind, it says that too.
Read the method
How the forecast works.
What goes in, what comes out, how it is checked against real PSK Reporter spots, and what we don’t know yet.
How band conditions workFree while ShackOS is in beta.
Every feature, no credit card. Sign up with your callsign to request access.