What the glowing logo means

The logo on the front is not decoration. On a device with no screen it is the only way to see, rather than hear, what is going on — which matters most when the device is not talking: while it connects, while it thinks, or when something has gone wrong.

Every app uses the same vocabulary, so a look means the same thing everywhere.

The vocabulary

What you see	What it means
Gentle twinkle	Ready and waiting for you
Steady green	The microphone is on and capturing your voice
Slow cyan breathing	Thinking — waiting on a reply
Light moving with the sound	Playing, or talking to you
Slow yellow breathing	Paused, or open but not started yet
A spinner going round	Connecting to something
Flashing amber	Someone is trying to reach you, or a voice message is waiting
One dim, steady amber light while switched off	A voice message is waiting — turn it on and open Friends
Pulsing red	Something has failed

Reading the spinner

The spinner's colour says what it is connecting to, which is the difference between "wait a moment" and "something needs fixing":

• White — waiting for a network connection.
• Blue — Bluetooth, during setup and pairing.
• Magenta — reaching our servers.
• Cyan — calling a friend.

A spinner that never resolves is the thing to look at. White that persists usually means WiFi; magenta that persists usually means the internet connection beyond your router.

Steady green is worth knowing

Steady green always means the microphone is capturing. It is the same green in every app, and no app can show green for anything else — so if you want to know whether a Peko Pal is listening, that is the single thing to look for. Playback apps never show it, because they never open the microphone.

Good to know

• Some apps use the light as the feature rather than as status — the glowlight's colours, the night light, Baby Smash's play colours, the walkie-talkie's channel colour. Those are doing their job, not reporting a state.
• "Paused" and "open but not playing yet" share the same yellow breathing on purpose. Inside a media app there is deliberately no distinction between the two.
• All of these are capped by the brightness ceiling you set in the Peko Pal app, except the dim amber "message waiting" light shown while the device is off. That one is set low on purpose so it is easy on the battery.
• A switched-off Peko Pal checks for new messages about every five minutes; see the Power, battery and charging article.