How every part of it works. Each section has its own link — copy one out of the address bar to send someone straight to it.
Ham Browser is one download and a normal install. Nothing else is needed on your computer.
It runs on macOS 11 and later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel. One download covers both.
Which one am I on? On Windows, open Settings, System, About and look at System type. If it says 64-bit, take the 64-bit installer.
Browsing, the maps, the Radio Programmer and rig control need no account at all. One free account unlocks the parts that have to know who you are: the logbook, Grid Rush, QSL cards and the CW Room. It is a QSL World account, so if you already have one, use it.
Forgotten the password? Choose Forgot password and a six-digit code is emailed to you.
Your account signs in one computer at a time. Signing in on the laptop signs the shack computer out.
Ham Browser is a normal browser with a second toolbar. The top row is the address bar and your tabs. The row under it is the ham bar: a search box on the left and the tools on the right.
Dashboard, Mail, Logbook, Map, Spots, Grid Rush, CW Room, Grey Line and Settings. On the right sit your callsign, the CAT badge showing whether a radio is connected, and a clock that is always UTC.
The search box searches the web, or looks up a callsign — use the selector beside it to choose. Typing a bare callsign in the main address bar looks it up too.
Hide the whole bar with ⇧⌘H (Shift+Ctrl+H on Windows) and bring it back with the same keys, or the small chevron it leaves behind.
The hamburger at the right end of the toolbar opens the same menu on every platform, with the shortcuts written for your system. On a Mac the menu bar at the top of the screen has everything too. Tools holds Contest Check, Watch, the Radio Programmer, the CAT console, Passwords and Extensions; Integrations deep-links to the QRZ, LoTW and CAT settings.
Use Ctrl in place of ⌘ on Windows.
Open it from the ham bar, or press F9 for the Speed Log sidebar beside whatever you are reading. Everything is stored in your QSL World account and mirrored to this computer, so it keeps working when the network does not.
Country, name, grid and distance fill in by themselves from the callsign where they can be found. What you type is never overwritten — only blanks are filled.
The search box takes a callsign or a name. The dropdowns filter by country, band and mode, and the column headers sort. Click any row to open the full record, with tabs for the QSO, the other operator, your station and the QSL details.
The icons on the right of each row are the confirmations: LoTW, eQSL, QRZ and QSL World. Filled means confirmed. The star marks a contact you flagged.
A template changes the entry form to suit the operating you are doing. Choose one in the logbook settings, under the gear icon.
Changing template never changes contacts you have already logged; it only changes which fields the form shows you next.
Press F9. A narrow logging panel docks to the side of whatever page you are on, so you can log while reading the cluster, a contest page or QRZ.
It is the same log: a contact saved here appears everywhere else immediately, and Grid Rush lights up the square without waiting for anything.
Press F9 again to put it away.
If the file was logged under a different callsign than the one you are signed in as, it asks rather than guessing.
The same panel exports the whole log, or just what your filters are showing, as ADIF. Contest Check exports Cabrillo as well.
Squares you worked years ago count in Grid Rush the day you log them. Importing an old ADIF is the fastest way to move that score.
Uploading runs through the ARRL’s own TrustedQSL program on your computer, so your certificate and its private key never leave it.
Press Upload to LoTW. It signs and sends everything not sent yet, and tells you what happened. If TrustedQSL asks for your certificate passphrase, Ham Browser asks you for it then — not before.
Import from LoTW fetches your matches and ticks the LoTW column on every contact that has one.
QRZ needs an API key from a QRZ Logbook subscription.
Import from QRZ pulls your QRZ logbook in. Upload to QRZ pushes contacts that are not there yet. The QRZ column then shows which are confirmed.
It goes in batches, showing progress as it works, and you can stop it at any point and pick up later. A batch is only marked as sent when every contact in it is accounted for, so nothing is ever ticked that eQSL did not take.
“No match on eQSL_User/Pswd for date…” is not a password problem — the login already worked. It means no account on your eQSL profile covers that date. Fix the QTH date ranges on eqsl.cc, or set the QTH nickname, and run it again.
Your card is your identity, drawn for every contact the moment it is logged. Nobody has to send anything, and redesigning it changes every card you have ever “sent”.
{CALL}, fills itself in per contact. Press Real QSO to see it with a genuine contact’s details.Drag to move, drag a corner to resize, double-click text to edit it. Pick a piece and its properties appear on the right; the layers list underneath shows everything on the card and lets you reorder or hide a piece.
The Album tab holds every card other operators have for you — one pile per operator, newest on top, drawn with their design.
Click a card to open it large, with the distance, the bearing, a map of the path and the operator’s details. If the contact is missing from your log, Add to my contacts logs it and confirms it both ways.
Open the album book turns it into a real book: full screen, page turns by click or drag, ← and → to move, Esc to close.
The world is 32,400 grid squares, and every contact you have logged already claims one. Open it from the ham bar; the first visit walks you through the rules.
The Score tab shows every term, and clicking any square spells out its own arithmetic.
Open a square and press Recon to see what is actually down there: the town, the weather right now, whether they are in daylight or on the grey line, everyone you have worked there, and the short and long path from your antenna.
If it says the copy of your log on this computer is short, press Copy my log to this computer. The board is scored from that copy, so a short copy scores short.
Live activity as a list and on a map. The tabs across the top are the sources: DX from the cluster, Live from your own cluster connection, POTA and WWFF.
Set your own cluster node in Settings, under DX Cluster.
Callsigns you want to be told about. Open it from Tools or the dashboard.
VP8 matches every Falklands station.When one of them appears on any feed, a chip appears beside the clock. Currently spotted shows what from your list is on the air now.
Live Morse over the internet, sent and copied by ear. No licence and no radio needed, and nothing is transmitted on an amateur band.
Hold the space bar, or the CW KEY button, as a straight key: short for a dit, long for a dah. Stop for a moment and what you sent is decoded and transmitted automatically. There is no send button.
Forty of them. Channel 1 is for calling — work someone there, then move to a free channel, exactly as you would move off a calling frequency. Channel 2 is ELMER, for slow CW and learners. Channel 3 is for rag chews. The arrow keys tune.
Switch to TRAINING and you get a private channel nobody else can hear, where HAMILTON — an AI operator — will answer you. It is patient with a poor fist and happy to be your first ever contact. The coach panel translates what came in, suggests what to send, and can play it before you send it.
The knobs set speed, tone and volume, and are remembered between sessions. Drag them up and down, or scroll on them.
Check a contest log before you submit it. Everything runs on your own computer; nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to.
It looks for missing or malformed headers, frequencies outside the amateur bands, reports that do not match the mode, duplicates, contacts out of time order, a sent exchange that varies between lines, implausible callsigns, working yourself, and rates that cannot be right.
The other tabs show your rate, bands, modes and hours, and a map of where you were heard. Submit links the sponsor’s own robot, matched from the contest name in your file, and separately lists the places to upload for confirmations — which are not the same thing as entering.
Export writes Cabrillo, ADIF, CSV or the findings as text. Duplicates are marked, never removed: taking a contact out is your decision.
Map in the ham bar plots every contact in your log. The buttons at the top left change the view:
Choose a basemap from the layers button, filter to one logbook, and use the expand button for full screen. The view you leave it in is the view you come back to.
Open Grey Line / Sat Tracker from the ham bar or the dashboard.
When a satellite is workable from where you are, a chip appears beside the clock with its name and how long the pass lasts. Click it to open the map.
A full mail client for any IMAP mailbox. Your card manager sends cards through it, and Watch sends its alerts from it.
For any other server, choose Other and it works the settings out from your address; you can correct them by hand.
Mail connects from your computer straight to your provider over an encrypted connection. Remote images in a message are blocked until you allow them, message by message.
Program a radio’s channels over a USB programming cable, with the CHIRP engine and its 551 radio models, in a tab.
Read before you write, every time. A radio written with settings from a different model can be left in a state that needs a factory reset.
Repeater Map shows your channels geographically. Import and export .img files to keep or share a configuration.
Open the CAT Console from the dashboard, or click the CAT badge in the toolbar.
Frequency, mode, band, split and the levels are all there, and everything sent and received is logged at the bottom if you need to see it.
Once connected, the badge beside the clock turns green and the logbook fills band and frequency from the radio as you log.
Bring your own account. Nothing is sent anywhere until you set one up.
The key is kept on your computer and requests go directly to the provider you chose. Summarize current page reads the page in the active tab.
F10 opens a sidebar with your own Claude or ChatGPT account beside whatever you are reading. Selecting text on any page and right-clicking also offers to proofread it, improve it, shorten it or make it more formal.
When you sign in to a site, Ham Browser offers to remember it. Saved sign-ins are encrypted on your computer, and filling one in asks for Touch ID, Windows Hello or your confirmation first. Manage them under Tools, Passwords, where you can search, reveal and delete.
Choose Never for this site in the save prompt to stop being asked for that site.
⇧⌘P opens a private window. Its cookies, its sign-ins and its cache are thrown away when you close it, and nothing goes into your history.
Open the menu and choose Set as default.
Ham Browser checks for a new version shortly after it starts and tells you when there is one. Nothing is installed behind your back.
To check by hand, open the Help menu and choose Check for Updates. Installing a new version keeps your log, your settings, your bookmarks and your saved passwords.
Check you are signed in — the person icon in the toolbar shows your callsign when you are. If qslworld.com is unreachable the logbook works from the copy on your computer and says so; contacts you log meanwhile are sent when the connection returns.
Nine times out of ten the baud rate in the CAT console does not match the one in the radio’s menu. After that: the wrong port, a cable that is charge-only rather than data, or another program already holding the port — close WSJT-X or your other logger and try again.
Maps need the network. If the rest of the web is working and a map is not, reload the page.
It scores from the copy of your log on this computer. Open Local Logbook from the File menu and press Sync now.
Write to hello@hambrowser.com with what you did, what you expected and what happened. Your version number is in the menu under About Ham Browser.