Parking SMS

Pay and stop SMS parking in one tap, with a timer and a full-screen alarm so you never forget to stop.

In many towns you start parking by texting <zone> <plate> to a city number, for example B9 SK4539AR, and stop it by texting S to the same number. Nothing stops automatically, so one forgotten stop means an expensive afternoon. Parking SMS sends those messages for you, runs the timer, and keeps ringing until you deal with it.

It is a small, fully offline, open-source Android app: no accounts, no tracking, no network permission.

Screenshots

Features

Paying and stopping

• One screen: city, zone code, plate and timer, then a big Pay button within thumb reach.
• Zone codes are remembered per city and shown as chips. Tap to reuse, long-press to remove.
• Plates and zones are cleaned live: bt-1110 ab becomes BT1110AB.
• Start and stop message templates are editable, so it works with your town's format.
• A failed SMS is retried once. If a Stop still fails, the alarm keeps ringing with a Retry button. It never fails silently.

Timer and alarm

• Choose No timer, 30 min, 1 h, 2 h or a custom length.
• Three modes: Alarm only, Auto-stop at the end, or Alarm, then auto-stop after a grace period.
• Optional reminder a few minutes before the end, plus snooze.
• A loud full-screen alarm over the lock screen with big Stop parking and Snooze buttons.
• An ongoing notification with a Stop action. Alarms and the running session survive reboots.

Everywhere you need it

• Home-screen widget (Pay when idle, live timer and Stop when parking).
• Quick Settings tile.
• History of every session, with a CSV export.

Safe to try

• Test mode logs the message it would send and never touches the SMS system.
• Light, dark or system theme, and optional Material You colors.

Install

Obtainium (recommended). Add this repository's URL in Obtainium and it will follow new releases.

APK. Download the latest APK from the repository's Releases page (or via the direct download button above) and open it on your phone.

From source. See docs/BUILDING.md for a step-by-step guide for Linux, macOS and Windows. You only need JDK 17 and the Android command-line tools, not Android Studio.

./gradlew assembleDebug     # APK: app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
./gradlew installDebug      # build and install on a connected phone
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest # unit tests

First-run checklist

Open Settings > Permissions & reliability. It shows the live status of everything below.

1. Allow restricted settings (apps installed outside a store, Android 13+): App info > three-dot menu > Allow restricted settings. Do this first if the SMS permission is greyed out.
2. Allow Send SMS and Notifications.
3. Allow exact alarms and full-screen notifications.
4. Set Battery to Unrestricted for the app.
5. On Samsung phones, make sure the app is not in Sleeping apps or Deep sleeping apps.

Try everything once in Test mode before using it for real. The app picks the default SMS SIM on dual-SIM phones.

Privacy and permissions

Everything stays on your device. There are no accounts, analytics, ads or network calls, and the app declares no INTERNET permission.

Permission	Why
SEND_SMS	Send the start and stop messages
RECEIVE_SMS	Only requested if you turn on Reply parsing, to store the city's reply
POST_NOTIFICATIONS	Session notification and alarm
SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM	Fire the timer on time, even in Doze
USE_FULL_SCREEN_INTENT	Show the alarm over the lock screen
RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED	Re-arm the alarm for a running session after a reboot
VIBRATE	Alarm vibration

How it is built

Kotlin, Jetpack Compose (Material 3), Room, DataStore and Glance (widget). No Hilt, no Google Play Services, no proprietary libraries, so it is F-Droid compatible.

• SessionManager owns all start/stop/alarm logic. The UI, notification actions, widget, tile and alarm receivers all call into it.
• The active session and its next alarm are stored in the database, never only in memory, so a killed process or a reboot cannot lose a running session.
• SMS sending sits behind an interface, which is what makes Test mode and the unit tests possible.
• The design system (header panel, plate badge, timer ring, big buttons) lives in ui/Design.kt, and colors and typography in ui/theme/Theme.kt.

app/src/main/java/app/parkingsms/
  data/       Room, repository, DataStore settings
  session/    SessionManager, alarms, notifications, quick actions
  sms/        SMS sender interface and implementations
  receiver/   alarm, boot and notification-action receivers
  widget/     Glance home-screen widget
  tile/       Quick Settings tile
  ui/         Compose screens and design system
  util/       plate/zone cleaning, templates, timer math, CSV

Roadmap

• Auto-stop or a reminder when your phone disconnects from the car's Bluetooth (the extension point is already marked in SessionManager)
• Interpreting the city's SMS replies
• Translations
• More widget layouts

Good to know

Standard SMS rates from your carrier apply. Parking SMS is not affiliated with any city or parking operator, and you remain responsible for your parking fees: check that your own start and stop messages are correct, and use Test mode first. Alarm reliability also depends on how aggressively a phone maker limits background apps, which is why the checklist above matters.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, especially message formats and zone conventions for other towns. Run ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest before opening a PR. To regenerate the README images from your own screenshots, drop them in docs/raw/ and run python3 tools/frame_screenshots.py (needs pillow and numpy).

License

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.