Live Mode¶

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

How to Open It¶

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

Top Bar¶

The top bar contains three elements:

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

Main Action Button¶

The large circular button at the bottom center changes state:

mic — start listening
stop_rounded — stop the active session
play_arrow_rounded — 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 and uses the color map, FFT size, frequency range, and duration from 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.