TopoKin on your computer

TopoKin for Windows and Ubuntu puts your group on a big screen: the same offline topo maps as the phone, the places and drawings your kin share, and where everyone is. It's made for planning a trip at home, for whoever stays behind while the others are out, and for a laptop at camp. It looks and works like the phone app: the map fills the window, the buttons on the right are the phone's, and the panel at the bottom has Mark here, Bearing, Ready? and Record trip.

Install

Get it from the download page:

• Windows: run the .msi. It installs just for you (no administrator needed) and adds TopoKin to the Start menu.
• Ubuntu: open the .deb (it opens in App Center), or run sudo apt install ./topokin_*.deb.

New versions show up inside the app (TopoKin x.y.z is out). They're checked against TopoKin's release key before anything installs.

Join your group, or start one

On first start, paste an invite link: in the phone app, Group › Invite, then send yourself the link. Pick the name your group will see for this computer (for example Den PC). The computer joins as its own member.

You can also start a new group from the computer and invite phones from Group › Invite: it shows a QR code to scan with the phone app.

Places and drawings shared before the computer joined arrive by themselves within a few seconds, from any phone that's online (TopoKin's relay doesn't keep messages, so they come from the group).

Maps

Topo maps come in squares about 11 × 17 miles. Click Maps on the right, choose Get more maps, click the squares you want, and Get maps. Each square is about 20–30 MB. Tick with satellite for offline to keep aerial photos too. Squares built before the latest map layers say older layers; Update them.

On the map:

• Find (the magnifier, or press /) finds summits, springs, trailheads and other named places and lists your own places; paste coordinates in any common format too.
• Satellite, Layers and 3D (needs a topo square there) are at the top right; Measure and Draw are at the bottom of the right-hand buttons.
• The bottom-left corner shows the coordinates and ground elevation under the mouse.

Planning

• Right-click the map to save a place (with a kind, folder and note), share it with the group, or set a rally point everyone sees for 3 hours.
• Measure a line by clicking points: you get its length, the climb and descent, and an elevation profile. Save route keeps it; Share as drawing puts it on everyone's map.
• Draw sends a hand-drawn note ("camp somewhere in here") to everyone's map.
• Find lists what you've saved (by folder, type or nearest) under Your places. Tick several to move, share, export or delete them together.
• Import GPX brings in waypoints and tracks from CalTopo, Gaia, Garmin and others; Export writes GPX back.

Your saved places and routes stay on your computer until you share them.

Your group

Group shows everyone, how fresh their position is, and their battery. Click someone on the map for Message (just to them), Ping (asks their phone for a fresh position) or Terrain between you. Trails show the last hour. Tracker radios your kin carry show up as 📟 with their name. Owners and admins can invite, make admins and remove people.

Messages works like the phone's: Everyone and a private conversation with each person, each with its unread count. Enter sends and Shift+Enter starts a new line; ⚡ has the quick messages. Point at a message for 😊 (react), ↩ (reply) and ⋮, or right-click it: Reply, Copy text, Copy coordinates, Info and Delete for me. You can also select any part of a message and copy it. Links open in your browser.

Add AI helper gives you a one-time code to connect Claude, as on the phone (Use TopoKin with Claude).

Where the computer is

The computer uses the best location it has, in this order:

1. A USB GPS plugged in (a puck or a truck's GPS). TopoKin finds it by itself.
2. A Meshtastic radio plugged in by USB, if it has GPS. The radio is set to your group's private channel, so the computer also hears your group's radios and trackers with no internet.
3. A Starlink dish on the same network (experimental, off by default): turn on Settings › Starlink dish GPS, and in the Starlink app turn on Allow access on local network.
4. Computer's location from Windows or Ubuntu, using Wi-Fi and the internet. It's approximate: at home on Wi-Fi it's usually within a few hundred feet, but on Starlink or a phone hotspot it can be miles off.

The status pill at the top shows which one is working. With Share my location with the group on (in Settings or Group), the computer shares GPS fixes like a phone does. It shares the computer's own location only when that's within 250 m (820 ft) and it isn't on Starlink, every few minutes; your group sees how far off it could be. Group says what's being shared. Record trip saves where the computer went as a route in the Trips folder; Mark here saves where you are now.

Keys and privacy

Your group's key and this computer's identity are stored encrypted. The key that unlocks them is kept by your computer: Windows protects it with your Windows account, Ubuntu with your login keyring. If your computer has no keyring, TopoKin asks you for a passphrase instead. Copying TopoKin's files to another computer doesn't copy access to your group.

TopoKin keeps its files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\TopoKin on Windows and ~/.local/share/topokin on Ubuntu. See the privacy policy for what goes where.