Trunk Recorder Pro 0.3.0 Adds Searchable Call History (2026)

Nov. 2, 2026: Trunk Recorder Pro shipped version 0.3.0, and the headline feature is one paid scanner apps have charged for: a searchable call history. Every finished call now lands in a local SQLite store, and the Listen page can page back through it with no 24-hour limit.

What Changed in Trunk Recorder Pro 0.3.0

Trunk Recorder Pro is the self-hosted stack that turns cheap SDR hardware into a trunked-radio recorder. Version 0.3.0, released Nov. 2, adds a call store. Each completed call becomes a row in trunk-pro.sqlite, and a talkgroup or radio page lists its calls "as far back as the store keeps them." The Listen page gains a "Load older" control that pages back "with no 24-hour limit," according to the release notes.

Retention is set by storage.retentionDays. The default is 120 days. Setting it to 0 keeps everything. A Postgres backend is also offered for what the notes describe as "years of history, your own backups and replication."

Why Call History Is the Feature That Mattered

Live audio is a stream. History is a record. Almost every commercial scanner app puts the record behind a subscription, because that is where the value sits: searching a talkgroup for last Tuesday, pulling the radio ID that keyed up before an incident, or checking what a department actually said at 2 a.m. when the news account and the official account disagree.

Free, self-hosted tooling has historically given you the live stream and thrown the audio away after a day. That gap is now closed for anyone willing to run a small server. It is the direct counterweight to the trend of feed login walls and shrinking free archives.

Cheaper Dongles Now Work Without Extra Drivers

The second change is practical rather than glamorous. RTL-SDR dongles built on the Elonics E4000 tuner now open on the built-in rtlsdr-nusb driver instead of requiring SoapySDR. The notes put coverage at roughly 52 to 2200 MHz, with a gap near 1090 to 1230 MHz and every P25 band clear.

In plain terms: the dongle you already own is less likely to fail at setup, and the driver stack is one layer shorter. For someone building a first trunked-recording box, that removes the step where most people quit.

Stereo Audio and Per-Player Gain

Live audio is now stereo, with per-player gain and pan. That sounds like a small quality-of-life change until you run a wall display. A single screen monitoring several talkgroups at once can now place them left and right and level them individually, so a quiet tactical channel is not buried under a busy dispatch channel.

The Breaking Changes You Need to Plan For

This is not a drop-in upgrade. Two things break:

• The old files storage backend is gone. Setups using it must move to the call store before upgrading.
• The calls API moved to cursor paging. Any script, dashboard, or integration reading that API with offset paging needs rewriting.

If you run a customized dashboard on top of Trunk Recorder, upgrade on a test box first. The audio is the easy part. The API consumers are what break quietly.

What This Means for Regular Listeners

Most people do not want to maintain a Linux server, a database, and a backup routine. They want to hear their county tonight. That is a different product, and it is a legitimate one: a handheld, pre-programmed to your zip code, that turns on and works.

Where the two meet is the interesting part. A recorder gives you the archive. A handheld gives you the street. Serious listeners end up with both, and the recorder is what tells you which talkgroups are worth putting in the handheld in the first place. If you are starting with the handheld side, the Baofeng K5 Plus tri-band covers more ground than a dual-band unit when a county spreads traffic across bands.

Who Should Upgrade Now

Upgrade now if you already run Trunk Recorder Pro and you have been waiting for history. The retention setting plus a Postgres backend is the difference between a monitoring tool and an archive.

Wait a release if you have custom API consumers or a shared dashboard. Let the cursor-paging migration settle, then move. Either way, the direction is clear: the paid-app feature list is getting shorter every month.

FAQ

What is Trunk Recorder Pro?

It is a self-hosted application that records trunked radio systems, including P25 police and fire traffic, using inexpensive SDR receivers. Version 0.3.0 shipped on Nov. 2, 2026.

How long does it keep recorded calls?

By default, 120 days. The setting is storage.retentionDays, and a value of 0 keeps every call. A Postgres backend is available for multi-year retention.

Does it still need SoapySDR for RTL-SDR dongles?

Not for Elonics E4000 tuners. Those now run on the built-in rtlsdr-nusb driver, covering roughly 52 to 2200 MHz with a gap near 1090 to 1230 MHz.

Is upgrading to 0.3.0 safe?

Only after planning. The old files storage backend was removed, and the calls API moved to cursor paging, so existing setups and API integrations need changes.

Does Trunk Recorder Pro replace a handheld scanner?

No. It records and archives. A handheld is what you carry and what works when the server is off, and most serious listeners run both.

Is recording police radio legal?

In most U.S. states, yes. Radio transmissions are generally not treated as private conversations, but some states restrict scanners in vehicles or during the commission of a crime. Check your state law before you record or share audio.

Bottom line: Trunk Recorder Pro 0.3.0 turns a free SDR stack into an archive with searchable call history, 120-day default retention, and a Postgres path to years of it. The upgrade costs you a storage migration and an API rewrite. What it buys is the record that paid scanner apps have been selling.