The in-game radio

PulseRadio ships a FiveM resource that puts a real handheld and a car radio on screen in game, on the same net as the dispatch console. Everything the console hears, the handheld hears.

Your server's admin installs the resource. This page is for the person holding the radio.

Link your account, once

The radio has to know which PulseRadio account you are before it will do anything.

1. Press F3 (or type /radio) in game. If you have not linked yet, the radio hands you a six-character code and opens your browser at the link page with the code already filled in.
2. Confirm it in the browser. You are already signed in there.
3. The radio comes alive where you are standing. You do not need to reconnect.

If your browser does not open (some clients block it), the code is also printed in the game feed, along with the address to type it at.

You link once, not once per server.

Your FiveM identity is bound to your PulseRadio account globally. Join another server running PulseRadio and it already knows who you are, puts you on that community's net, and asks for nothing.

Codes last ten minutes. If yours expires, press F3 again for a fresh one.

Keys

Everything is rebindable in GTA Settings → Key Bindings → FiveM → PulseRadio. These are the defaults, and a default only applies to somebody who has never bound that action: once you have chosen a key, FiveM remembers your choice and a new default will not move it.

Key	What
` (hold)	Transmit. The backtick / tilde key, left of 1
F3	Take the radio out · take hold of it again
F4	Put the radio away. /radio hide does the same
Escape	Hand the mouse back to the game, leaving the radio on screen
Page Up / Page Down	Next / previous channel
Home / End	Next / previous zone
Numpad + / Numpad -	Volume up / down

Keeping the radio up without losing your mouse

F3 takes the radio out and hands it to your mouse, so you can work the faceplate.

Escape gives the mouse back and leaves the radio on screen. It stays readable (channel, zone, who is talking) and the keybinds keep driving it. That is the state to leave it in while you are doing anything else. Press F3 to take hold of it again. F3 never puts the radio away, deliberately: a key that sometimes hides it is a key you have to think about before pressing. F4, or /radio hide, is the only thing that takes it off the screen.

While the radio has your mouse, attack and aim are suppressed so clicking the faceplate does not fire your weapon. Movement and driving are not; a radio you have to stand still for is not a radio.

Zones and channels

Your radio is programmed by your community. If they have built a codeplug, you get their zones in their order. If they have not, your radio is programmed from the community's channel categories, one zone per category, so it is usable before anybody writes one.

• Channel steps within a zone. Zone steps between them.
• The Zone softkey only appears when you have more than one.

The status lamp

Every mobile head has a stack of three lamps, beside the power button on most of them, beside the glass on the monochrome one. They are red on top, yellow in the middle, green at the bottom, and each says its own thing:

Lamp	What
Solid red	You are transmitting. It lights the moment the key goes down, not when the system grants you the channel; that gap is real, and it is where people clip their first syllable
Solid yellow	You keyed up and the channel was busy. Yellow rather than red deliberately: red would say your carrier came up, which is the opposite of what happened
Blinking yellow	The traffic you are hearing is on an encrypted channel
Blinking green	Somebody else is talking on the channel you are on

On power-up they sweep red, then yellow, then green, and go out: a self-test walking the stack.

The pager has one lens rather than three and uses it differently; see the pager section below.

The menu

The row of labels along the bottom of the screen is the menu, and the buttons under them are the softkeys. The nav pad's left and right page the menu: the whole row is replaced by the next row, so the labels stay under their buttons.

The keypadless fire mobile has no left or right arrow, so on that one the starred key beside the screen turns the page, wrapping round to the first. It also takes you back to the home screen from inside a list.

Label	What
Zone	Pick a zone from a list
Scan	Scan on or off
ScnL	Edit which channels are in your scan list
Nuis	Nuisance delete: drop the channel you are hearing from the sweep. Only appears while scanning
Pwr	Transmit power, high or low
Net	Who else is on the net
Info	This radio: your callsign, the zone and channel you are on, the channel's type and talkgroup, and the build you are running
Set	Settings: which agency you are working, which radio you carry on foot and in your car, how big it is drawn, the sounds it makes, and linking your account

There is no Chan entry, no Vol and no Monitor. The channel selector and the volume control are physical knobs on every one of these radios, and a real Motorola only puts something on the menu when it has no control of its own. Monitor is a dispatcher's function; an in-game radio scans instead.

There is no Dir entry either, and nothing to switch. DIR appears in the status row by itself whenever you are on a car-to-car channel, because a car-to-car is talkaround: it goes radio to radio and never through the towers, so there is no repeater on it to bypass. The signal bars disappear on those channels at the same time, and for the same reason: the meter reports how well the system reaches you, which says nothing about whether the unit two streets away can hear you.

Net, Info and Set share the last page of the menu, and the page before it is padded out with blank softkeys rather than being filled up. Those three are about the radio itself; everything ahead of them works the radio, and that is what you are reaching for mid-call.

Working as

Under Set, when your community has agencies and you are on at least one roster. Selecting it steps to the next agency you belong to, and the radio tells you in the game feed what it did.

Your radio programs from it the next time it starts. Rejoin the server to pick the new one up now. On one roster the row still shows, and selecting it simply says which; on none, the row is not there at all rather than reading "None".

If you are signed on to a PulseCAD unit, that wins. The radio says so and names the agency CAD has you out as, instead of appearing to ignore the keypress.

Scan

Scanning sweeps your scan list, not every channel you can hear. A new radio's scan list is empty, so build it first under ScnL, otherwise Scan has nothing to sweep.

When scan lands on traffic it parks there for a moment after the transmission ends, so you can answer, then resumes.

Scanning stops while you are keyed up, and you hear nothing at all until you let go. One radio, one antenna: transmitting takes the receiver off the air, so a real handheld misses whatever went out while you were talking and picks straight back up when you release. This is not a setting.

Building the scan list

ScnL opens the list editor. Move down the zone with the channel knob or the nav pad, and:

Softkey	What
SEL	Add the channel you are on to the list, or take it off
RCAL	Jump to the next channel already on the list, so you can check what you have built
EXIT	Back to the home screen

Each press of SEL is saved as you make it. There is no separate confirm step, so leaving by any route (EXIT, the home key, or the radio being put away) keeps what you did.

The list is saved against your account, not against the server you are on: sign off, come back tomorrow, and it is the list you left. Your community's programming decides what your radio comes up scanning the first time; after that it is yours.

Nuisance delete

One channel running a long incident will capture the scanner every few seconds and you will hear nothing else. While it is talking, press Nuis: that channel comes off the sweep and scan carries on without it.

It does not change your programmed scan list. It is temporary, and it is forgotten when you switch scan off, when you pick a channel by hand, or when you turn the radio off. That is deliberate, and it is how a real radio behaves: silencing a talkgroup for the afternoon should never turn into an edit you made by accident and cannot find again.

You cannot delete the last channel on the sweep. The radio will tell you, which is also how you find out your list is down to one.

In a car

Get into a vehicle and your radio becomes the head in the dash; get out and it is back on your belt. It is the same radio as far as the net is concerned: it stays switched on, on the same channel, at the same volume. Only the faceplate changes.

Pick which handset you carry with /radioskin, and which car radio with /radiocarskin. Run either with nothing after it and the radio lists what you can pick, numbered, then /radioskin 3 for the third. The model names still work if you know them. Your choice is saved to your account, so it follows you to another machine.

The pager

The voice pager is not one of the radios you can pick with /radioskin. It is a second thing on the belt, so it has a command of its own:

/pager puts it in your hand, /pager again puts it away. /pager on and /pager off state a result rather than flipping, for a keybind or a deck button that has to be safe to press twice.

It receives and cannot transmit: no microphone and no talk key, which is the whole point of carrying one. It has no display either, and that is why it is a command rather than a menu entry: with no screen there would be nothing to change your mind with once you were on it.

Whichever radio you carry is still there underneath, on the same channel, and comes back the moment you put the pager away.

How big the radio is drawn

/radiosize 1 to 9, smallest to largest, applied to whichever radio is on screen: the portable on foot, the head in a car. Run it with nothing after it and it tells you where you are. The Size row under Set steps through the same nine and wraps at the top, which is the version you can reach without typing.

Dragging still works and is still the only way to move the radio: Set → Move / resize takes the mouse, and you can scroll to resize while you are in there. The difference is that a size step needs neither the cursor nor your attention off the game.

Who else is on the net

Net on the menu lists every radio on your community's net (not just the people on your channel), with, on each line:

• their radio ID and callsign, in that order, which is the order an ID is said out loud on the air;
• the channel they are on, short name, or blank if it is one your radio does not carry;
• a highlight while they are keyed up, and whoever is talking floats to the top of the list, so on a net longer than the display the person actually on the air is the one line guaranteed to be visible.

Your own radio is not on the list. It answers "who else is out there", and alone on the net the list is empty rather than showing you.

Three ways in, and they all open the same screen: Net on the menu, /radio net, or a key you bind yourself as Radio: who is on the net. That key ships unbound on purpose; the net list is not a mid-scene action, so it is not worth a default key taken off everybody. Bind it in the FiveM keybinding menu if you use it often.

Move or resize the whole radio (Set → Move / resize) and the list moves and resizes with it; it is drawn on the radio's own display rather than in a window of its own.

A radio with no display cannot show it, and says so in chat rather than appearing to ignore the key.

Commands

Command	What
/radio	Take the radio out, or get a link code if you have not linked
/radio hide	Put the display away without switching the radio off
/radio on, /radio off	Power. There is no default key for this, deliberately
/radio net	Who else is on the net
/radio channel <n>, /radio zone <n>	Jump straight to a position by the number beside it on the list
/radio volume <0-16>	The knob has sixteen detents
/radio scan on\|off, /radio monitor on\|off	Scan and monitor
/radio talkanim	Your own talk animation. No argument flips it
/radio version	Which bundle this server is running
/radio link	Get a link code
/radioid	Show your radio ID; set it if your community allows
/pager	Carry the voice pager, or put it away. on/off state a result
/radioskin <n>	Choose the handheld you carry. No number lists them
/radiocarskin <n>	Choose your car radio. No number lists them
/radiosize <1-9>	How big the radio is drawn. No number tells you where you are

/radio on its own never puts the radio away. If it is already up it takes focus so you can use the mouse. /radio hide is how you dismiss it.

The ones that take a value state a result rather than a movement: /radio channel 3, never "next channel". That is what makes a Stream Deck button work: a button has to be safe to press twice. Same reason scan and monitor take on and off instead of toggling, so two people pressing the same button end up with the same radio rather than opposite ones. The relative forms live on the keys, where a hand is doing the moving.

Signal

If your community has signal simulation switched on, terrain, tunnels and interiors affect your reception, and you will hear it, not just see it on the meter. A distant unit comes through degraded and then drops out, the meter falls, and the display says you have no signal. It is never an error message, because from inside the world it is not one.

The radio does not hiss. It used to, on the argument that a real one does, and it was a noise nobody could switch off over a game they were already listening to. Everything else about signal is unchanged: it is still modelled, and you still lose channels in a tunnel. There is simply no static bed behind it.

With no signal, keying up is refused. You get the blocked tone for as long as you hold the key, the same as keying a channel somebody else already has, and the display says you are out of range. That is the honest answer: with the system out of reach nothing you said would arrive, and a radio that opened the mic anyway would be telling you that you were transmitting when you were not. Let go, move, and try again, which is exactly what the tone is for.

Car-to-car is exempt. It never needed the towers, so it still keys and still works with the meter empty.

The bars disappear on a car-to-car, and that is not a fault. A direct channel does not go through the towers, so how well the system reaches you says nothing about whether the unit two streets away can hear you; a car-to-car works fine in a dead spot, and can fail with a hill in the way and full bars showing. There is no meter that could tell you the truth about it, so the radio shows none. What you hear is still right: another unit fades as they drive away from you.

Tunnels come with the map

You do not have to draw them. If your community's map is set to PulseRadio Default (under Coverage in the admin hub), the tunnels, underpasses and underground facilities on that map already take signal away. Drive into the Del Perro tunnel and you will hear it close in, without anybody having configured anything.

There are four answers there, and admins should know what they pick:

Setting	What you get
PulseRadio Default	The map's tunnels and forty-one transmitter sites covering it. Radios work everywhere populated, straight away
PulseRadio Tunnels Only	The tunnels, but no towers. Coverage is whatever your admins place. Pick this if you are modeling a real county's system and want your sites to be the only ones
PulseRadio Blank	Nothing assumed about the world. Only what your admins set up applies
Custom	Not a choice: where you end up once you place a tower, draw an area or switch to a saved map

Saved maps, sharing one with other communities and taking somebody else's are all covered in Coverage: where the radios work.

If you pick tunnels-only, be aware that until you place a tower radios simply follow the roads, and the moment you place your first one, that tower becomes your entire system. That is the point of the option, but it surprises people.

Seeing your coverage

Coverage draws your coverage on the map once signal simulation is on: where radios have full signal, where it thins out, and where there is none at all. It is computed with the same model the radios themselves run, so it is not an illustration. It is the answer.

Underneath it is the list of your transmitter sites with their coordinates, marked for whether there is a mast you can drive to or just equipment inside a building.

Dead-zone areas are outlined rather than shaded. They only apply at their own depth: a tunnel does not affect the road above it, and a flat map has no way to show that.

Towers you can see

On the San Andreas map the system starts with forty-one transmitter sites: Los Santos and the airport, the Vinewood hills, Sandy Shores and Grapeseed, Paleto Bay, Zancudo, Mount Chiliad reaching over the whole north, and the back-road fill along Route 1, Route 13, Grapeseed and the Zancudo highway. You do not have to place anything for a radio to work.

Coverage is strongest in the city and the towns and falls off in between, the way a real system does. The sea and the deep back-country are outside all of them, on purpose: a system that reaches everywhere is the same as no system at all.

A site an admin adds is built in the world as a real mast, and it adds to those forty-one rather than replacing them. You can drive to it, and it is a landmark you can navigate by, which is most of the point: when your radio works here and not two miles up the road, there is something to look at that explains why.

Every one of the forty-one is PulseRadio's own mast. None of them borrows a mast the base game already has: the handful that used to were moved clear of it rather than left standing beside it.

Nothing can damage them. They are scenery, deliberately. A comms grid one player could shoot down would take everybody else off the air mid-shift, so towers cannot be destroyed and there is nothing to repair.

Priority traffic

When a channel is working an incident (a pursuit, a foot bail), somebody puts it into priority traffic from a console or another radio. Your radio plays three beeps, shows PRI at the top of the display, and sounds a reminder tone every so often until it is released.

You are not locked out. Key up and you get the channel exactly as you always would. It is a request, in the same way it is on a real net: if you do not need that channel right now, stay off it.

It is not a panic. Nothing about your own radio changes, and there is nothing for anybody to clear.

When something is wrong

• No sound at all, and the meter is empty: you may have no signal where you are standing. Move.
• You key up and hear a low tone: somebody with equal or higher talk power is already transmitting. Wait for them to finish.
• Your radio is on but nothing happens when you press a key: check it is actually switched on. A radio that is off swallows commands silently, as a real one does.

If the radio is genuinely broken rather than out of range, it says so in the game feed and writes the reason to the server console, so your server's admin can see what happened without being there at the time.

For admins: placing coverage

Everything below needs manage_settings in the community, the same permission the hub asks for. The command exists in game because coordinates are the whole point: you stand where the thing goes rather than guessing at a map, and the height it records is the real ground height at that spot.

Command	What it does
/radiocoverage tower <name> [range]	Puts a transmitter site where you are standing. Range is in meters and defaults to 2000
/radiocoverage area start <name> [tunnel]	Begins drawing an area. Walk or drive the edge; markers show where you have been
/radiocoverage area save	Saves what you have walked as a dead-zone area
/radiocoverage area cancel	Throws it away

Add tunnel to area start and the height you walked is recorded too, so the area only affects people underground and not everybody driving over the top of it.

A tower does not change anybody's radio until they get a fresh session. The coverage map travels with the radio, so after a placing session run pulseradio_resession in the server console and everybody picks up the new map without reconnecting.

An ordinary player typing these gets a refusal. If you would rather the command failed earlier and more quietly for staff who are not radio admins, set Config.adminAcePermission in the resource's config, but that is convenience, not the security: the permission check is on your membership, and editing your own config file does not get you past it.

Updating

The radio's interface ships inside the resource, so it does not follow the website. When PulseRadio updates the in-game radio, your server's admin re-downloads the bundle and replaces the folder. There is no in-game updater, because FiveM does not let a resource rewrite itself.

The version you are running is in the resource's own config; the download page says what the current one is.