Lode: Stud & Metal Detector

Lode is a stud finder, metal detector and magnetic field meter from Moonlet Labs. It uses your phone's built-in magnetometer (the compass sensor) to detect iron and steel (ferrous metal) a few centimetres from the phone.

Metal detector
Zero Lode to the room, then sweep the top of the phone slowly over a wall, a floor or a box. A needle and a live reading in microtesla rise as you get closer to iron or steel, and a five-step strength bar (None, Faint, Near, Close, Very close) shows how near you are. Optional sound and vibration speed up as the signal grows, and max hold keeps the peak. If a magnet is too close for the sensor, Lode says so instead of showing a wrong number.

Stud finder
Hold the phone flat against the wall and slide it slowly sideways. Lode finds the steel screws and nails that fix the board to each stud, shows them as peaks on a scrolling trace, and lets you mark each one. Choose low, medium or high sensitivity. Lode finds a stud by its fixings: it cannot see the wood itself.

Magnetic field meter
Read the magnetic field on the X, Y and Z axes and the total, in microtesla or milligauss, with a live graph of the last 10 seconds, 30 seconds or 2 minutes. Pause the graph to study it, or copy a reading as text.

What Lode can't do
Lode only senses iron and steel near the phone. It cannot detect gold, silver, copper, brass or aluminium, because they are not magnetic, and it cannot see wood. Zero it away from magnets, magnetic phone cases and laptops. If the phone asks, move it in a figure of eight to calibrate the compass. Lode needs a phone with a magnetometer.

Lode remembers your last tool and your settings.

Privacy: no account and no permissions needed. All features work offline, and magnetometer readings stay on your device. The app is ad-supported: ads are served by Google AdMob, which may use the advertising ID. Moonlet Labs collects crash reports and usage analytics through Google Firebase, linked to pseudonymous app identifiers rather than your name or email. Where the law requires it, the app asks for your consent first, and privacy choices are in Settings. Privacy policy: moonletlabs.com/privacy.html