A Full Guide_ Learn how to Use the Starlink App
Desk of Contents What Is the Starlink App? Predominant Display and On-line Standing: Is Your Service Dwell? Account Profile: Payments, Assist, and New Gear Statistics: How Has Your Service Been Performing? Community: Who’s Utilizing Your Starlink? Obstructions: Acquired Clear Sky? Velocity Take a look at: How’s Your Starlink Efficiency Now? Settings: Tweaking and Stowing Starlink Assist: Uncovering Starlink Assist Superior Settings: Deeper Dives for Assist and Setup Joyful Starlinking!
The Starlink app is indispensable to Starlink customers for one clear purpose—you want it when positioning and organising your dish. However the Starlink app is beneficial for far more than that preliminary setup, with instruments for monitoring your community standing, operating velocity checks, managing units and content material on your own home community, and far more.
Let’s take a tour of the capabilities and options of the Starlink app. Utilizing my very own account and the app on my Android telephone, we’ll go to the indispensable options in addition to focus on the best way to use the Starlink app’s extra superior corners. And don’t fret when you’re on iPhone, as a result of the iOS model of the app is just about equivalent between the 2 ecosystems.
What Is the Starlink App?
Along with the bodily dish and router that you will get within the Starlink starter pack of kit, there’s the Starlink app. Accessible on each the Google Play Retailer for Android, and the Apple App Retailer for iOS units, this app is your management heart for Starlink.
Right here you can create your account, get step-by-step help as you arrange your dish, and entry sources that SpaceX does not give the common public on its web site, like the power to buy Starlink equipment and test your account billing.
Need to entry these similar choices in your desktop PC? In your browser you may entry the Starlink app by going to http://192.168.100.1 or dishy.starlink.com, which gives you a browser-based model of the app. Nonetheless, Starlink assist supplies advise customers that the telephone app is up to date extra ceaselessly, so the browser model could not have each function you see right here.
The cell app has one different huge benefit over the browser model: You’ll be able to entry just about each function remotely, letting you monitor your community and modify settings from wherever. Simply be careful for actions like resetting your router or stowing your Starlink dish (which we’ll focus on later)—you are able to do these remotely, however beginning issues again up could require being linked to your Starlink router over Wi-Fi.
Predominant Display and On-line Standing: Is Your Service Dwell?
The app’s principal display provides a menu of selections, in addition to an animated Starlink dish and router, displaying you whether or not your Starlink system is on-line or not.
This easy picture is definitely fairly informative—in case your dish loses its connection or there is a disruption between the dish and the router, the graphic will change to point this.
And, when you’re feeling bored, you may rotate the dish and router. As an alternative of a static picture, it is a 3D rendered mannequin that you could rotate a bit.
Account Profile: Payments, Assist, and New Gear
Within the prime proper nook of the App principal web page is a consumer icon, which can open your account info. This provides you a single place to evaluate your account and plan settings, test on previous and present account statements, test messages from Starlink buyer assist, and store for official Starlink equipment.
Statistics: How Has Your Service Been Performing?
The primary merchandise on this menu is Community Statistics. Right here you may view a number of key efficiency stats, measuring community consistency, latency and throughput. Here is what you can test:
However that is greater than a group of fairly charts, since you too can spot anomalies in efficiency, observe outages, and look at community historical past to see if a present drawback is new or a part of an ongoing difficulty.
Community: Who’s Utilizing Your Starlink?
Underneath the Community choice, you can see at a look each system with a connection to your own home community, from smartphones and TVs to laptops and desktops. (My very own family is a little bit uncommon, since I am additionally testing a number of laptops in my dwelling workplace, including a number of extra units to no matter my household and I’d recurrently join for private use.)
That is particularly useful for locating undesirable units in your community (like a neighbor that acquired your password one time, and has since stored connecting to Wi-Fi), or merely seeing units you hadn’t accounted for when pondering via your bandwidth wants.
Obstructions: Acquired Clear Sky?
When you’ve arrange your dish correctly, there should not be something between the dish floor and the sky, giving it a transparent view of the satellites flying overhead. However given the weeks or months that may go after setup, any variety of obstructions can crop up, from rising timber to nesting animals.
The graphic above illustrates the dish’s capacity to speak with overhead satellites by displaying a blue and purple dome over the dish face. Blue represents clear, unobstructed views, whereas purple highlights something blocking the dish. Paired with helpful compass instructions, it’s best to have the ability to rapidly diagnose any issues brought on by undesirable obstructions.
And, when you want extra help, there is a digicam mode that permits you to use your telephone digicam at dish top to make a visible sweep of the complete field of regard for the dish, so you may make certain that each you and your dish are seeing as many satellites as potential.
Velocity Take a look at: How’s Your Starlink Efficiency Now?
If you wish to see what your community velocity is correct this minute, you too can run a velocity take a look at proper within the app. The speedometer graphic will rev up because the take a look at will get going, and when it is all accomplished, you will get a report for each the obtain and add speeds and latency supplied in your community and system.
There’s additionally the choice for a sophisticated velocity take a look at, which sequentially checks each the Wi-Fi velocity between your system and router, after which the speeds between the router and the larger web by way of Starlink. You are not probably to make use of this extra detailed take a look at as ceaselessly, however it may be a great way to diagnose issues if one among your units appears to be getting slower.
Settings: Tweaking and Stowing Starlink
Underneath Settings, you can test your Starlink router settings, from selecting a community title and password to filtering content material for the entire family to bypassing the router solely (a necessity for utilizing an Ethernet adapter for third-party networking gear) to setting a customized DNS.
It is also the place you will go to reboot the router and even do a full reset of your {hardware}.
You too can test the settings for the Starlink dish, modify the heating for various climate situations, set a sleep schedule to preserve energy throughout off hours, and reboot your Starlink dish.
Want to show off your dish for the foreseeable future? Yup, that is the Stow Starlink choice. This may come in useful when you’re shutting down the web for a couple of months, packing up the dish for journey to a special location, or when you ever have to ship the dish again to SpaceX at tech assist’s request.
Stowing the dish will disconnect it from the satellites overhead and return the motorized positioning mechanism again to its default place. This makes it simpler to reposition the mast mount for packing—if the Stow Starlink choice is not working, you will should manually transfer the mount, which takes a bit extra muscle, and will probably harm the dish.
Assist: Uncovering Starlink Assist
Folks will typically complain that there is no such thing as a buyer assist for Starlink, however that is not true—it is just a bit laborious to seek out. Within the Starlink app you may evaluate all kinds of plan particulars, arrange your dish for the primary time, and even troubleshoot efficiency issues.
Most of that is automated, however after going via the advised fixes for any drawback, hitting the “thumbs down” button will open up a assist ticket request, which can allow you to ship a message on to SpaceX’s Starlink tech assist individuals. As soon as you have despatched it, simply keep watch over the messages part in your Starlink profile.
Actually, the one grievance I’ve with the app is that messages and communication with Starlink assist aren’t extra apparent. The truth that messages should be accessed via your account profile, which itself is not a transparent choice on the primary app menu, signifies that some customers will not see vital assist emails, and even know that the assist choice exists.
Superior Settings: Deeper Dives for Assist and Setup
Lastly, on the very backside of the app, down under the underside of the primary menu, there’s an Superior part. This opens up a display of nitty-gritty information, like account ID numbers, system IDs, software program variations, and extra. There are additionally two further menu choices: Set Up One other Starlink and Debug Information.
If it is advisable arrange a second Starlink package—reminiscent of if in case you have a cell Starlink Roam in your RV, along with your own home dish—that is what you will use to provoke the setup course of within the app. Nonetheless, doing this requires quickly disconnecting the app from the Starlink community that is already arrange, so do not fiddle with it when you needn’t.
The second choice, Debug Information, is a dump of all the data accessible about your dish, router, and community, from obstruction info to dish orientation to GPS validity and router configuration particulars. A few of it is attention-grabbing, a few of it’s redundant to the data you will see elsewhere within the app, and a few of it’s going to solely have that means to the Starlink assist crew that may request it. In any case, now you understand the place that may be discovered.
Joyful Starlinking!
Now that you’ve got a greater concept of what your Starlink app does, and the place the completely different bits of helpful info may be discovered, you may go ahead being a bit higher knowledgeable about your satellite tv for pc web connection. Might your sign stay robust and unobstructed!