Menu, Shortcuts & Troubleshooting

Reference for the menus and keyboard shortcuts, plus what to do when the scanner won't connect.

• Menu & Keyboard Shortcuts
• The scanner won't connect
• Other common issues

Menu & Keyboard Shortcuts

The menu

Bearpaw's menu bar has three menus of its own, plus the standard app menu.

View jumps between the three tabs.

Scanner covers actions on the radio.

Help — the first two items open in your web browser.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut uses a modifier key (Ctrl on Windows/Linux, ⌘ on Mac) except Escape. Shortcuts are ignored while you're typing in a text box.

The scanner won't connect

If the connection dot in the bottom-left corner is red and stays there, work down this list.

1. Is the scanner powered on?
2. Is it a data USB cable? This is the most common cause. Many USB cables, especially ones that came with other devices, carry power but not data, so the scanner charges but never appears to the computer. Try a different cable, ideally the one that came with the scanner.
3. Try a different USB port on your computer, and avoid unpowered USB hubs. Plug directly into the machine if you can.
4. Give it a few seconds. Bearpaw reconnects on its own.
5. Quit and relaunch Bearpaw.
6. Unplug the scanner and plug it back in. A restart clears almost everything, but a USB connection can occasionally get stuck in a state that only the physical unplug resets. This is the one step that always works.

If none of that works, the Device tab's Device Information card shows a diagnostic message that can point at the specific problem. For USB-detection issues on macOS, a short troubleshooting checklist appears there automatically.

Other common issues

My channels don't match what's on the scanner

Bearpaw saves a copy of your channel memory between sessions so the list can appear instantly at launch. If you programmed a channel on the radio's own keypad while Bearpaw was closed, that saved copy is out of date — and the scanner has no way to announce the change, so the app can't know on its own.

Look next to the search box on the Channels tab. It shows when the list was last read from the scanner — Synced 3d ago. Press Refresh beside it to re-read, or use Scanner → Sync Memory.

To avoid it entirely, leave Re-read Channels on Connect switched on. That's the default, and it re-reads the scanner at every launch — about five seconds.

Editing is safe either way: Bearpaw re-reads a channel from the scanner just before writing to it, and keeps the scanner's values for every field you didn't change. A stale list can look wrong, but it won't overwrite work you did on the keypad.

My channel edits didn't save to the scanner

Edits on the Channels tab are held as drafts until you press Upload Changes. If your changes seem to have vanished, check the pending-changes strip above the channel list. "N pending" means your edits are waiting to be uploaded. See Drafts and uploading. (The Priority switch is the exception; it applies immediately.)

I set a permanent lockout by accident

The L/O button on the Scan tab opens a menu with Temporary and Permanent choices. To clear a permanent lockout, pick Permanent again while on that channel, or clear it from the Locked Channels list on the Device tab.

The app warns it's from an "unidentified developer"

The builds aren't code-signed yet, so your operating system flags them on first launch. See the install instructions for how to open it anyway.

A setting on the Device tab didn't take

Scanner settings are written to the radio the instant you change them. A failed write (a momentary USB hiccup, say) shows a red error message, and the setting may not have changed. Try again; if it keeps failing, check the connection.

Advanced: forcing a specific port

Auto-detect handles the scanner on every platform, so you almost certainly don't need this. But if auto-detect keeps selecting the wrong USB-serial device, a config.yaml file can force a specific port.

Put it in the app's data folder:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.jeremyfuksa.bearpaw/config.yaml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\com.jeremyfuksa.bearpaw\config.yaml
• Linux: ~/.local/share/com.jeremyfuksa.bearpaw/config.yaml

A minimal example:

device:
  # Only set this if auto-detect picks the wrong device:
  port: /dev/cu.usbmodem14101 # macOS
  # port: COM3                # Windows
  # port: /dev/ttyUSB0        # Linux