TARKKWHAT YOU GET
- Talking over Bluetooth, free and without an account. A monthly or annual subscription adds Wi-Fi, hotspot and guest connections, muting yourself, and sharing music.
- The source code, under the AGPL-3.0 — yours to read, run, change and pass on under that licence’s terms.
- A plain answer when something fails, in the app itself, and somewhere to report it when the answer is not enough.
WHAT WE CAN’T PROMISE
- That it will connect. Phones, radios and networks differ enormously, and some combinations simply refuse.
- That it is private. A channel code keeps groups apart; it is not a password and it does not encrypt anything.
- That it will always be here. The download, the browser guest, the account server and the project itself are run by a very small team.
Agreeing to these terms Link to this section
Using Tarkk — the Android app, the optional Tarkk account, the browser guest at app.tarkk.ir, or this website — means these terms apply to you. If you do not accept them, do not use it, or uninstall it; if you made an account, you can delete it too (see “Your account” below).
These terms cover how you use Tarkk. They are not the licence for the code — that is the AGPL-3.0, and it says what it says regardless of anything written here.
What Tarkk is Link to this section
Tarkk is a walkie-talkie for phones that are near each other. It connects them directly over Wi-Fi, a hotspot one of them hosts, or Bluetooth, and carries live voice between them. Talking needs no internet connection and no mobile signal. An account is needed only to subscribe.
It is not a telephone service and not an emergency service. It cannot reach emergency numbers, it does not work beyond radio range, and it must never be the only way you can call for help.
The licence Link to this section
Tarkk’s source code is published under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. In short: you may read it, run it, modify it and redistribute it, provided anything you distribute — including anything you run as a network service — carries the same freedoms and the same licence.
The licence text itself is the authority here, not this summary. If you want Tarkk inside a closed-source product, or the AGPL’s terms do not suit you, a negotiated commercial licence is available — write to the address at the bottom of this page.
The name Tarkk, the wordmark and the logo are not covered by that licence. A fork is welcome; a fork that presents itself as the original is not.
What it costs Link to this section
Talking over Bluetooth is free, and needs no account. The paid features — Wi-Fi, hotspot and browser-guest connections, muting yourself, and sharing music — come with a subscription.
There are two plans, monthly and annual. There is no free trial and no lifetime purchase. The price is shown in the app and in Bazaar before you pay.
Subscriptions are sold only through Cafe Bazaar and paid with Iranian payment methods inside Bazaar. A subscription belongs to your Tarkk account: you sign in to buy one, and signing in on another phone brings it with you.
- A subscription renews at the end of each period until you cancel it in Bazaar.
- If you cancel, you keep the paid features until the end of the period you have already paid for.
- If a purchase is refunded before it expires, the paid features end straight away.
- Buying, renewing, cancelling and refunds are also subject to Cafe Bazaar’s own terms.
If you used Tarkk before subscriptions existed, the same rules now apply to you as to anyone new: Bluetooth stays free, and the other features need a subscription. Thank you for being here early.
Donations are still welcome and entirely voluntary. A donation is a gift toward test devices, a domain and hosting; it is not a purchase, it does not unlock any paid feature, it creates no obligation on either side, and it cannot be refunded.
If prices or plans change, the new price is shown in the app and in Bazaar before you are asked to pay it.
Your account Link to this section
An account is optional. You only need one to subscribe; everything free works without it. You can sign up with an email and a password, or with Google sign-in on Android.
Use an email address that is yours and that you can read — verification codes and password resets are sent there — and keep your password to yourself.
The display name and avatar you choose are shown to the people in a channel with you. Names are not checked for uniqueness, so nothing stops two people choosing the same one.
You can delete your account whenever you like: in the app under Profile → Delete account, or by asking us by email. Deleting the account does not cancel a subscription in Bazaar; cancel that in Bazaar too.
Your channels, settings and history live on your phone, not in the account. We cannot restore them on a new phone and we cannot tell anyone who was in a channel — because none of that ever reaches us.
Using Tarkk responsibly Link to this section
What you say over a channel is yours, and so is the responsibility for it. Do not use Tarkk to:
- Break the law that applies to you, or help someone else do it.
- Harass, threaten or intimidate anyone, or push audio at people who have not chosen to hear it.
- Record or relay a conversation to someone outside the channel without the consent of the people in it, where your local law requires that consent.
- Interfere with a network you do not have permission to use, or with anyone else’s use of one you share.
- Share music or other audio through the app in a way that infringes somebody’s rights in it. What you cast is your call and your responsibility.
- Choose a display name that pretends to be someone else or is meant to offend.
There is no moderation and no way for us to intervene: no conversation reaches us, so there is nothing we could review, block or take down even if we wanted to. Enforcement here means walking out of a channel and starting one with a code you did not share.
A channel is not a private line Link to this section
The short code a channel gets keeps groups on one network from hearing each other. It is not a password, it does not encrypt anything, and Tarkk adds no encryption of its own over the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth link. Anyone with the code, or with the right access to the same network, can hear the channel. Treat it as a radio channel — because that is what it is — and do not use Tarkk for a conversation that has to stay confidential.
One exception, and it is a narrow one: a guest joining through a browser connects over WebRTC, which browsers encrypt end-to-end as a matter of course. That protects that one link in transit. It does not make the channel itself private, because anyone holding the code can still walk into it.
Riding, driving and your attention Link to this section
Tarkk was built with riders in mind, which makes this worth saying rather than assuming. Set the app up before you move. Do not look at your phone while riding or driving, and obey whatever your local law says about headsets, earpieces and phones on the road — those rules vary, and they are yours to know.
Anything you listen to takes some of your attention, however hands-free it is. You decide whether it is safe to have a channel open, and you carry the consequences of that decision.
What we don’t promise Link to this section
Tarkk is provided as it is, with no warranty of any kind — not of fitness for a particular purpose, not of merchantability, and not of uninterrupted or error-free operation. That is the AGPL’s position too, and it is stated here in the same words a court would expect rather than hidden in a licence file.
Concretely, and from experience rather than caution: some phones kill background audio however carefully the app asks them not to; some Wi-Fi networks block the traffic between two clients entirely; some Bluetooth stacks refuse a link that works fine on the next handset over; and a strict NAT can leave a browser guest unable to connect at all. None of that is something we can guarantee our way out of.
What we do promise is that the app will tell you which part is failing instead of shrugging — that is what the preflight check and the “Something wrong?” button exist for.
Limits on liability Link to this section
To the fullest extent the law allows, Tarkk and the people behind it are not liable for loss or damage arising from your use of it — including a message that did not arrive, a connection that dropped at a bad moment, a conversation somebody overheard, or anything that happened while you were paying attention to a channel instead of to the road.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limits to be excluded. Where that is the case, this section applies as far as it lawfully can and no further, and nothing here is intended to exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.
Things outside our control Link to this section
A few things Tarkk leans on belong to other people: Cafe Bazaar, which sells and bills the subscriptions; the host of the Android download and of the account server; Google, which delivers account emails and offers Google sign-in; the platform that handles donations; and the public STUN server a browser guest uses to find its way. Each has its own terms and its own privacy policy, and none of them is ours to guarantee.
The same goes for your own equipment. Phones, headsets, routers and operating-system updates change behaviour without asking us, and a release that works everywhere on Monday can meet a new Android build on Tuesday.
Changes, and endings Link to this section
Features may be added, changed or removed as the app develops, and these terms may be updated with them. The date at the top of this page moves whenever they are, and the full history is in the public repository this site is part of.
We may also stop. The hosted parts — the download, the browser guest and the account server — could go offline, and development could end. The app already on your phone would still talk over Bluetooth, because a channel never depends on us being there, and the source stays public for anyone who wants to carry it on. If it ever comes to that while subscriptions are running, we will say so in the app and on this site before it happens.
Governing law Link to this section
These terms are governed by the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and disputes arising from them belong to the competent courts of Iran. If a mandatory consumer-protection rule where you live gives you rights this cannot override, it does not try to.
If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of it stands on its own.
Contact Link to this section
Questions about these terms, a subscription, a commercial licence, or anything you think is missing from them go to the address below.
Licensing, these terms, and everything else.