Live Mode¶

Live Mode is the fastest way to listen through the phone microphone and review detections as they appear in real time.

How to Open It¶

From the Home screen, tap the Live Mode card with the icon.

Quick Listen¶

Quick Listen starts listening in a single tap, without opening the app and navigating in first — useful when you hear something you want identified before it stops calling. Every entry point below opens Live Mode and begins listening straight away, whatever the Auto-start recording setting is set to, and none of them changes that setting.

Add it the way you add any widget: press and hold an empty spot on the home screen, tap Widgets, find BirdNET Live, and drag out one of the two tiles.

Quick Listen (2×1) — icon with a Start Listening label
Quick Listen (compact) (1×1) — icon only

Both do the same thing.

iOS: Shortcuts, Siri, Action Button, and app icon¶

BirdNET Live offers a Start Listening action to the system, so there is nothing to build by hand:

Action Button (iPhone 15 Pro and later) — open Settings → Action Button, choose Shortcut, and pick Start Listening under BirdNET Live. Pressing and holding the button then starts listening.
Siri — say "Start listening with BirdNET Live", "Listen for birds with BirdNET Live", or "Identify a bird with BirdNET Live".
Shortcuts app — the Start Listening action is listed under BirdNET Live. Use it in a shortcut of your own, add that shortcut to the home screen, or run it from Back Tap, a Focus, or an NFC tag.
App icon — press and hold the BirdNET Live icon on the home screen and tap Start Listening.
URL — automations that open a URL can use birdnetlive://listen.

Siri phrases and the Action Button listing need iOS 17. The Shortcuts action, the app-icon menu, and the URL also work on iOS 16.

What happens next¶

If Live Mode is already open, Quick Listen returns to that same screen instead of rebuilding it. A running or paused Session continues unchanged; if it is stopped, listening starts on the existing screen.

Quick Listen never replaces another running mode. If a Point Count, Survey, File Analysis, or ARU Mode Session is running or starting, the app comes to the foreground and asks you to stop that Session first. Its screen and work remain accessible and are not interrupted.

Top Bar¶

The top bar contains three elements:

— leave Live Mode
center status text — Initializing, Loading model, Ready, Identifying species, Paused, or Error
— open the Live-specific Settings view

Main Action Button¶

The large circular button at the bottom center changes state:

— start listening
— stop the active session
— resume from a paused-ready state

What You See While Listening¶

Spectrogram¶

The spectrogram scrolls continuously while capture is active. It shows frequency content over time, using the color map, FFT size, frequency range, and duration configured in Settings.

Detection list¶

Recent detections appear below the spectrogram. Each row can show:

species image
common name
optional scientific name
confidence value

Tap a species row to open the species details overlay.

Session info bar¶

The compact info line under the spectrogram summarizes the current session, for example:

current detections shown now
unique species count (spp)
total detections (det)
elapsed duration
estimated recording size when recording is enabled

Recording Behavior¶

Recording is controlled in Settings.

Full records the whole session.
Detections only records clips around detections.
Off disables recording.

When you stop Live Mode, BirdNET Live saves the session and opens Session Review.

Live Mode also saves a partial Session at the start, every 30 seconds, and when the app goes into the background, and it writes the finished Session to disk before the microphone is released. After a crash, a power loss, or the system ending the app in the background, the latest saved snapshot is available in Session Library, marked as interrupted when the app ended mid-session. Changes since that snapshot can be lost. These checkpoints are kept even with automatic saving turned off; a finished Session then still opens in review as unsaved and is discarded when you leave without saving.

Screen-off listening¶

Live Mode normally pauses when you lock the screen or leave the app and resumes the same Session when you return. The first time this happens, a dialog offers limited background listening. In Recording settings, turn on Continue with screen off and choose a 15, 30, 60, or 120 minute maximum (30 minutes by default). The time limit applies to each period away from the app; reaching it ends the Session. On Android, a persistent notification shows that listening is active and offers Open and Stop actions. On Windows, Live Mode keeps listening while its window is minimized.