Frequently Asked Questions

Meow is a native desktop SIP softphone built with Qt 6 and baresip. It makes and receives voice calls over any standard SIP provider or PBX. It is a voice client, with no video calling and no instant messaging.

Yes. Meow is a SIP client, so you need an account from a provider or your own PBX (FreePBX, Asterisk and similar). Your provider gives you a server address, username and password. If your provider issues a separate authentication ID, as iWay accounts do, there is a field for it.

Yes. Meow includes a 14-day free trial with full functionality, and no credit card is required. The trial starts the first time the app contacts our server.

Windows 10 or later, and Linux. On Linux we test every release on Fedora 36+ and Ubuntu 23.04+, with .rpm and .deb packages for them; any other distribution can run the AppImage, provided it has glibc 2.34 or newer and PipeWire 0.3.50 or newer, which covers current Debian, Linux Mint and Arch. If the audio system is missing, Meow says so at startup rather than failing later in a confusing way. Both Wayland and X11 sessions are supported, with Wayland the primary target. There is no macOS build. An Android app is coming soon to Google Play, and an iPhone app later (see /mobile).

Yes. You can hold one call and take another, swap between them, merge them into a three-way conference, drop a single participant, or end one and resume the other. Three calls can exist at once, counting anything ringing.

Yes, three ways. A call that is still ringing: press Transfer on the ringing screen and the caller is sent on without you answering. During a call: press Transfer and enter any number or extension. Meow calls it first, with your caller on hold, and puts the caller through as soon as it answers; if it is busy, wrong or not answered, the caller stays with you on hold. (Safe Transfer, on by default; switch it off in Settings to hand the call to your phone system straight away.) Attended: use Add Call to ring the colleague first, speak to them, then press Connect to join the caller to them. A conference cannot be transferred, since that is two separate parties rather than one.

Yes. Recording is started and stopped from the call screen, and recordings are listed in the app. There is also an option to record every call automatically. Check your local law before recording: in many places you must tell the other party.

Yes. Export your contacts as a vCard (.vcf) file from your phone, Google Contacts, Apple Contacts or Outlook, then choose Import from vCard in the Contacts menu. Pictures come across too. Contacts whose number you already have are skipped, and Meow tells you how many it imported and what it left out. You can export all your contacts, a selection, or a single contact the same way.

Yes: a main number, a mobile and a work number, alongside email, website, birthday, notes and a picture. A call from any of the three shows the contact's name, and a caller who is not saved yet can be added to an existing contact in one step.

Yes, where your provider offers it. Numbers are managed per line in Settings, each registers separately so any of them can receive calls, and you choose which number places an outgoing call. The call log records which of your numbers carried each call.

Both, and forwarding comes in two kinds. Auto-Forward sends incoming calls elsewhere after a delay you set, but it needs Meow running to do it. If your PBX publishes forwarding feature codes, you can enter them once and then turn forwarding on and off from Call Settings — that kind keeps working after you close Meow. The presence control offers Busy, which queues callers silently without ringing, and Do Not Disturb, which declines them. There is also auto-answer with a configurable delay.

Yes, if your PBX publishes extension status — FreePBX and Asterisk do by default. List the extensions you want to watch and they appear above your call history with a lamp each: green when free, amber while ringing, red on a call, along with who is calling them. Clicking one places the call. A lamp stays grey when the PBX has not said anything about that extension, because showing someone as free when we have not been told is how a call gets put through to a phone that is already busy.

Yes, where your PBX has a parking lot. Parking is not holding: a held call stays on your phone, while a parked one is handed to the PBX so anyone in the office can take it from their own desk. Parked calls appear in Meow with the caller's number and a Pick up button. Enter your PBX's parking extension and slot range once and a Park button appears during calls.

Yes. When your PBX reports waiting messages, Meow shows a badge with the count, and clicking it dials the mailbox. Nothing to configure: it appears on its own once the PBX starts sending it. If your PBX does not say which number to dial, the count still shows without the shortcut rather than guessing at a feature code.

If you give the account a backup server, the line moves to it on its own after about twenty seconds and the badge turns amber to say so. It tries the main server again every few minutes and returns when it answers, without dropping a call to check. Without a backup configured the line retries a bounded number of times and then stops, rather than hammering a server that is not answering.

Yes. Meow registers up to two lines simultaneously and shows the status of each. You choose which line places a call, or set one as the default.

On Windows, Meow uses WASAPI and follows the Windows “Default Communications Device”, so a headset plugged in mid-session is picked up. On Linux it uses the PulseAudio client API against PipeWire's PulseAudio server, which requires PipeWire 0.3.50 or newer. PipeWire is standard on all supported distributions.

Yes. Input, output and ringtone devices are chosen separately in Settings, and connected devices appear in those lists. Your choice is remembered by device name rather than by port, so it survives being unplugged and reconnected. Meow also makes sure the microphone is actually working before it answers a call, so headsets that are slow to wake up do not cost you the first words.

The most common cause is the microphone. Meow watches it for the whole call: if it delivers nothing, Meow restarts it on its own, and if that does not help, a red banner on the call screen says so. If it works but hears only silence for a few seconds, for example a headset whose boom microphone is raised to mute it, the Mute button pulses amber, and hovering it explains. If the device Meow was told to use is unplugged, Meow names the missing device; pick another in Settings, or reconnect it. If the microphone is fine and audio is missing in one direction only, that is usually the PBX advertising a private media address; Meow corrects the common case of this automatically. Otherwise check that your PBX allows RTP traffic, commonly ports 10000-20000.

On Windows it is the file meow.log in %LOCALAPPDATA%\meow\meow (paste that into the Explorer address bar). On Linux it is in the system journal: run journalctl --user -t meow-sip --since today > meow-sip.log and attach the file. For a problem with a provider, start Meow with --sip-debug to include every SIP message in full; passwords and encryption keys are never written to the log, but the numbers you called are, so share it only with support.

No. Meow opens the microphone when a call starts and releases it a few seconds after the last one ends, so the recording indicator on your system only shows while you are actually on a call.

Any standards-compliant SIP server, including FreePBX, Asterisk, 3CX, FusionPBX, Kamailio and OpenSIPS, whether on your own hardware or cloud-hosted. UDP, TCP and TLS transports are all supported.

Yes. Media is encrypted with SRTP whenever the other end offers it, and unencrypted otherwise so a call never simply fails. The call screen tells you which you got: “Encrypted call” means both signalling and media are protected, “Encrypted audio” means the media is but the signalling is not. For encrypted signalling, configure the account with TLS transport.

Yes, and in the normal case there is nothing to configure. Meow keeps its connection alive so the PBX can reach it, and corrects the common misconfiguration where a PBX advertises a private media address that no external client could reach.

On your computer. Contacts and their pictures, call history, recordings and settings live in a local database, and account passwords are stored encrypted. The only things sent to us are what licensing needs: an anonymous device fingerprint, your licence key, and the app version.

Each license covers the number of computers its plan includes, and each computer is recognised by a hardware fingerprint. To activate, click the key icon at the top right of the Meow window, paste your license key and click Activate. The license checks in online from time to time and keeps working offline for up to 14 days (7 days, then a 7-day grace period). Moving to a new computer? Free up the old one at meow.qfiber.co.il/license.

Meow stops registering with your PBX and stops making and receiving calls, and asks for a licence key. Your accounts, contacts, call history and settings are all kept, and everything resumes as soon as a valid key is entered.

Yes. Deactivate it on the old machine first, which frees the licence, then activate on the new one. If the old machine is gone or will not start, contact support and we will release it for you.

Changing hardware can change the fingerprint a licence is tied to. Docks and USB network adapters used to be enough to do this; from version 0.6.8 they are ignored, so docking or undocking no longer affects your licence. Upgrading to 0.6.8 may ask for activation once more on affected machines, and then stop asking. If it keeps happening, contact support.

An Android app is coming soon to Google Play, with the iPhone app after it. It has the business features of the desktop app (two lines, transfer, hold, conference, busy lamps), rings on the lock screen through Android's own call system, and is set up with one QR code from your administrator. The Mobile page (/mobile) shows it.

Yes, when your PBX has the Meow module: FreePBX and Asterisk today. Phones do not let an app stay connected in the background, so the PBX asks our server to wake the phone, which then connects and rings in about a second. On a PBX where the module cannot be added, such as 3CX or most hosted services, the app rings only while it is open. Your administrator's steps are on the PBX Setup page (/pbx-setup).

Ask your administrator for a setup code. They make it in the license portal, and it carries your license and usually your phone line. In Meow, open the menu, tap Set up with a code and scan it. Then allow the notifications, the call screen when locked, and battery use set to Unrestricted, so calls can ring. Getting Started (/getting-started) has the steps.

Yes, a phone takes a seat like a computer does. Your administrator can remove a phone that is no longer used, which frees its seat for another device.

No. Calls wake the phone through Google Play services, which works without signing in to a Google account. Phones without Play services, such as Huawei phones since 2019, cannot be woken for calls.

No. Our server only wakes the phone: it passes the caller's number and name to Google's push service and keeps neither. The call itself, and its audio, go directly between the phone and your PBX, encrypted with TLS and SRTP when your PBX supports them.

Yes. Companies can join our partner program and issue Meow licenses to their own customers, either for the Meow app as it is or for a version of Meow with their own brand. The program is for companies only. The Partner Program page (/partners) explains it and has the link to apply.

A build of Meow with a partner's name, logo, contact details and colours, which we make and keep updated for them on Linux and Windows. Licenses a partner issues for its branded build work only in that build, and licenses for the Meow app do not work in it.

Per seat: a license's seats are the number of devices it allows, and they are billed once the first device activates it. A license nobody has activated costs nothing. Some partners also pay a yearly fee. We issue a tax invoice at the start of each month for the seats billed the month before.

In the partner portal, or from their own systems (a CRM, for example) through the partner API. Partners can issue, extend and revoke licenses, see each license's devices and free a seat when a customer replaces a computer. Signing in to the portal always takes a password and a code from an authenticator app.

The company you bought it from: partners give their customers first-line support, and we support them.