CREWS

A Crew is who your location is actually shared with.

In STALKR a Crew is a persistent trusted group, and every Crew is its own authorization and sharing scope. Membership is approved rather than assumed: someone joins by entering a Crew code and asking, and an owner or admin decides. Crews are available in the current STALKR iOS TestFlight beta.

Quick Answer

A Crew is a persistent group in STALKR that acts as a single sharing scope. Members of the same Crew see each other's current position, facing direction, accuracy, status and battery on the map while they are sharing, along with that Crew's Markers and Zones. What you share with one Crew is not shared with another — you can be Live in one Crew and Dark in another at the same time. People join by entering a Crew code and asking to join, and a Crew owner or admin approves or declines the request.

Page Map

One Crew, one scopeWhy sharing is grouped at allHow invites and join approval workOwner, admin, and memberWhat the Crew can actually seeLeaving, removal, and deletionWhat Crews do not do

One Crew, one scope

Most location apps have a single list of people and one switch that governs all of them. STALKR does not. Each Crew is an independent authorization and sharing scope, and switching the active Crew switches the entire map with it — the members you can see, the Markers you can open, the Zones being drawn, and the sharing state that applies to you.

The practical consequence is that the Crew you are looking at decides what you see, and the Crew you chose decides who sees you.

  • Members and presence — only members of the active Crew appear on your map.
  • Markers — Crew-scoped points: Waypoint, Danger, Safe Zone, Camp, Vehicle, Animal Sign, Evidence, Supply Cache, and Custom.
  • Zones — Crew-scoped circles or polygons, each with its own visibility, monitoring and enter/leave alert settings.
  • Live and Dark — chosen per Crew rather than once for the whole account.
  • Journeys — a separate scope again: a Journey's watchers are chosen for that trip, independently of every Crew.

Why sharing is grouped at all

The people you want to see your position on a hunt are usually not the people you want to see it on a Tuesday evening, and the group coordinating a road trip is rarely the group that needs your camp marked on a map. A single friends list forces one answer for all of them, which is why most people either overshare or turn the whole thing off.

A Crew makes the difference explicit. Membership is a decision somebody made — a code was shared, a request was sent, an admin approved it — and it can be undone by leaving, by removal, or by the owner deleting the Crew. An invite is a membership in one group, not a standing subscription to your movements.

It also keeps the blast radius of a mistake small. Adding the wrong person to a hunting Crew shows them what that Crew shares, and nothing else.

How invites and join approval work

Every Crew has one persistent code. Admins can also create temporary codes that carry an expiry and, if they want one, a limit on how many people may request with them. SHARE CREW opens your phone's own share sheet with the invite link and the human-typeable code together, so it works whether the recipient taps a link or types the code into the join screen.

Resolving a code is deliberately not the same thing as joining:

  • Codes are 4–20 characters and are normalised to uppercase letters and numbers, so they survive being read aloud or retyped.
  • Resolving a code returns only the Crew name, the canonical code, whether the invite is persistent or temporary, its expiry, and its limit state. It does not reveal Crew IDs, owners, member rosters, member counts, or anyone's location.
  • Resolving a code creates no membership and notifies no admin. The person has to confirm the preview and tap ASK TO JOIN.
  • An owner or admin sees the pending request and accepts or declines it. Approval creates membership exactly once — repeated taps, or two admins deciding at the same moment, still resolve to a single outcome.
  • An unrecognised code gets a deliberately generic answer, so the join screen cannot be used to find out which codes exist. Expired, revoked and full invites say so, because those states are actionable for the person holding them.
  • Changing a persistent code takes the old one out of circulation: it is reserved for 90 days before another Crew can claim it, and an expired or revoked temporary code is reserved for 30 days.

Owner, admin, and member

A Crew has three roles, and they are enforced in the database rather than merely hidden in the interface. Removing an admin while you are an admin, or deleting a Crew you do not own, is refused server-side.

  • Owner — created the Crew, or had ownership transferred to them. Only the owner can promote a member to admin or demote one, remove an admin, transfer ownership, or delete the Crew. The owner cannot be removed by anybody; ownership has to be transferred first.
  • Admin — decides join requests, sees code history, changes the Crew's persistent code, creates and revokes temporary invites, edits Crew settings, and removes regular members.
  • Member — sees the Crew's map scope and its active persistent code, and can share that code onward. Members do not see pending join requests or code history.

What the Crew can actually see

Going Live in a Crew publishes your current authorized position, facing direction, accuracy, status, and battery where it is reported, into that Crew's scope. What the map shows is bounded by what is actually known:

  • Presence is labelled live, stale, or unknown. A stale position is marked stale rather than drawn as though it were current.
  • A direction cone appears only when the heading is trustworthy. Where it is not, the cone is omitted instead of guessed.
  • Dark stops new fixes reaching that Crew. It is not a deletion: authorized viewers keep the last location they were already given, marked offline.
  • Approximate location can represent a position as an area rather than a point where the sharing mode or the operating system's accuracy requires it. It lowers precision — it is not anonymity, and authorized viewers still receive an area.
  • Tracking Enforced is a Crew rule, gated behind Pro admin controls, that keeps every member of that Crew — the owner included — Live until the owner turns enforcement off in Crew settings. It cannot manufacture a position: if location permission is denied, there is nothing to publish.

Leaving, removal, and deletion

Membership is reversible from both directions, with one rule that exists to stop a Crew becoming unadministrable.

  • You can leave a Crew at any time, which ends your access to that Crew's map scope.
  • The last owner cannot simply walk away from a Crew that still has members. STALKR refuses and asks you to transfer ownership first, or to delete the Crew — otherwise nobody would be left who could rename it, change its tracking rule, or remove it.
  • An owner or admin can remove a member, and that person loses access to the Crew and its map. Admins cannot remove other admins; only the owner can.
  • Only the owner can delete a Crew, and deleting it removes the Crew for everyone in it.

What Crews do not do

Crews are in beta, and the honest limits matter more than the feature list:

  • STALKR is an iOS TestFlight beta. There is no public App Store release and no Android release.
  • The Free plan allows up to 2 Crews and up to 5 members per Crew. Pro raises those configured limits. Tracking Enforced, Journeys, and some watcher notifications are Pro capabilities.
  • Creating or changing a Crew requires the service. Previously cached membership may still be visible without connectivity, but there is no durable offline outbox: a failed live write is not queued for later delivery, and a Dark change made offline may not reach the Crew until connectivity resumes.
  • If the Crew list fails to load, STALKR reports it as unavailable rather than showing you an empty account, because those two things mean very different things.
  • Member updates arrive while the app can receive realtime events. Member state is held in memory and is reloaded when the app restarts.
  • Background continuity depends on iOS: Always location permission, not force-quitting the app, and the operating system's own execution limits all apply.
  • A Crew is a coordination tool. It does not contact emergency services, and it is not a satellite, mesh, or off-grid link — sharing a position needs a data connection.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Crew in STALKR?

A Crew is a persistent trusted group that acts as one sharing scope. Its members see each other's current position, direction, accuracy, status and battery while they are sharing, plus that Crew's Markers and Zones. Each Crew is an independent authorization scope, so what you share with one Crew is not shared with another.

How do I invite someone to my Crew?

Open CREWS, select the Crew, and tap SHARE CREW. STALKR opens your phone's share sheet with the invite link and the Crew code. Admins can also create a temporary code with an expiry and an optional request limit. The invite is not sent until you complete your phone's own share flow.

Can someone join my Crew without approval?

No. Entering a code only resolves it to a Crew name and invite state — it creates no membership and notifies no admin. The person must tap ASK TO JOIN, and a Crew owner or admin accepts or declines the request before they appear in the Crew.

What is the difference between an owner, an admin, and a member?

Only the owner can change roles, remove an admin, transfer ownership, or delete the Crew, and the owner cannot be removed by anyone. Admins decide join requests, manage the Crew code and temporary invites, edit Crew settings, and can remove regular members. Members see the Crew map scope and the active persistent code.

If I go Dark in one Crew, am I dark in all of them?

No. Live and Dark are chosen per Crew. Going Dark in one Crew leaves your sharing in every other Crew exactly as it was, and a Journey you are sharing continues independently. Dark stops new locations reaching that Crew; it does not delete the last location members already received, which stays visible marked offline.

Can I be in more than one Crew?

Yes. On the Free plan you can be in up to 2 Crews with up to 5 members each; Pro raises those configured limits. Switching the active Crew switches the members, Markers, Zones and sharing state shown on the map.

Can a Crew owner force me to share my location?

A Crew can have Tracking Enforced turned on, a Pro admin control that keeps every member of that Crew — including the owner — Live until the owner disables enforcement in Crew settings. It cannot override your device: if location permission is denied there is nothing to publish, and you can still leave the Crew.

Why did my Crew invite code stop working?

An admin most likely changed the Crew's persistent code, which takes the old one out of circulation and reserves it for 90 days. Temporary invites can also expire, be revoked, or reach their request limit. Ask an admin for the current code or a fresh invite link.

What happens when someone leaves or is removed from a Crew?

They lose access to that Crew and its map scope. Any member can leave at any time, and an owner or admin can remove a member — though admins cannot remove other admins. The last owner cannot leave a Crew that still has members without first transferring ownership or deleting the Crew.

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