You open the Starlink app, tap into obstructions, and get a dark circle streaked with blue and splashed with red. There’s a percentage beside it and no legend that really explains it. Meanwhile your video calls freeze every few minutes, and you’re wondering if the culprit is the oak tree, the chimney or Starlink itself.
This guide translates the map into plain decisions. You’ll learn what each part of the circle means, how long to wait before trusting it, the six common patterns and what causes them, how much red is too much, and how to tell an obstruction problem from a network or congestion problem. There’s also a clearance calculator that tells you how high or how far the dish needs to move to clear a specific tree.
Eight Things to Know Before You Move Anything
If you only have a minute, these answers cover what most people get wrong about the map.
Red marks parts of the sky where the dish lost a satellite because something got in the way: a tree, roof, chimney, pole, wall or vehicle.
They’re satellite passes the dish tracked without interruption. More blue and less red is the goal. Some apps and third-party tools use green instead of blue.
The map starts filling within minutes and is usually close to complete after about six hours. Give it a full day before making expensive decisions.
A little at the rim usually is. At 1 to 5% obstructed, most people only notice the odd blip on calls or games. Above about 10%, service gets genuinely spotty.
Yes. Red near the center (straight overhead) does more damage than red at the outer edge, because the dish spends more time talking to satellites high in the sky.
That’s usually normal. Starlink avoids the strip of sky where geostationary TV satellites sit, so that band collects no data. It doesn’t mean something is blocked.
Yes. Recent app versions put a reset option in the obstructions screen’s settings (often a gear icon). Rebooting the dish also starts a fresh map. Reset only after you move the dish or remove an obstruction.
Then it’s probably not an obstruction. Check the app’s outage list: network outages, congestion, power, Wi-Fi and router issues all look like “Starlink is down” but have different fixes.
How to Read the Map, Piece by Piece
Think of the map as a photo taken by someone lying on their back next to the dish, looking straight up with a very wide lens.
The middle of the circle is the sky directly above the dish. The farther from the middle, the lower the sky, until the outer edge, which is the lowest part of the sky the dish actually uses. That rim isn’t the true horizon. Current Starlink dishes have a field of view of about 110 degrees, so the rim represents sky well above the treetops on flat ground. That’s why a tree that looks “off to the side” from your porch can still show up as red at the edge of the map.
Compass direction matters too. Starlink’s own install guide says the dish settles at a slight tilt toward the north in the Northern Hemisphere, so in the United States the northern part of the sky usually does more of the work. The app marks north on the map. Check that marker rather than assuming the top of your screen is north, especially if the dish was mounted at an unusual angle or, as some RV owners have found, upside down.
To get to the map, connect to your Starlink Wi-Fi, open the app and look for the obstructions view from the home screen or the dish’s status. Menu labels have shifted between app versions, so if you don’t see it right away, look under the dish’s details or the statistics area. Before installation, use the separate Check for Obstructions tool, which uses your phone’s camera to scan the sky from a candidate spot. That’s a prediction. The obstruction map you see after setup is the real record.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Blue (or green) streaks | Satellite passes with a clean connection | Nothing; this is good |
| Red area or wedge | Passes interrupted by something in the way | Find the object in that direction |
| Dark or gray, unfilled | Sky not mapped yet (no passes recorded) | Wait; it fills over hours |
| Blank curved band | Sky Starlink avoids near geostationary satellites | Ignore; not an obstruction |
| Dot or marker | Where the dish is aimed, in some app views | Use it to orient yourself |
| Percentage | Share of the dish’s view that’s blocked | Target 0–5% |
Stand next to the dish, face the direction of the red area using your phone’s compass, and look up at the angle that matches how far the red sits from the center. Red near the rim means look fairly low; red halfway in means look about halfway up the sky. Whatever’s there, a branch, gutter, satellite TV dish, chimney cap or neighbor’s roof, is almost always the cause. Taking a photo from that spot makes the conversation with a tree service or installer much easier.
How Long the Map Takes, and When to Reset It
The map doesn’t scan the sky the way the camera tool does. It learns only from satellites actually passing overhead, so it needs time.
Starlink reworked the map in early 2024 so it updates in real time and draws individual satellite paths, rather than a solid fill that took about 12 hours to complete. Testers reported that a useful picture now forms within about three to six hours. In the first few minutes you’ll see a handful of streaks and lots of dark sky. That dark area isn’t clear; it’s unknown. People who move a dish after 20 minutes because “the map looks empty” are reacting to missing data, not a bad spot.
The red is also delayed for the same reason. A tree only shows up once a satellite actually passes behind it and the link drops. So an early map that’s all blue is encouraging but not proof. We’d wait a full day, through both daytime and overnight satellite passes, before buying mounts, poles or tree work.
Researchers who studied Starlink dishes found that rebooting the dish cleared its cached map and that new data began appearing within about 30 seconds of reboot. Users report that recent app versions also let you reset the map from the obstructions screen, often under a gear icon. Reset it when something has changed: you moved the dish, trimmed a tree, added a mast or set up camp in a new spot. Resetting without changing anything only throws away data and makes you wait again.
A freshly reset map shows a low obstruction percentage simply because it hasn’t seen many blocked passes yet. If the number climbs back to the same level a few hours later, nothing has improved. Use resets as a before-and-after test, comparing two complete maps, not a fresh one against an old one.
The Six Patterns Most Maps Fall Into
Most maps look like one of these shapes, or two of them combined. The shape tells you more than the percentage does.
One tree: a wedge at the rim. A single tree some distance away blocks a slice of low sky in one direction. The wedge’s width tells you how wide the tree looks from the dish, and how far it reaches toward the center tells you how tall it looks. This is the easiest pattern to fix: move the dish a few feet away from the tree, or raise it so the tree drops below its view.
Roof or wall: a band along one side. When the dish sits low on one side of a roof or close to a wall, the building cuts off a broad arc of sky. You’ll often see this with a dish on an eave or a lower roof section. Moving to the ridge or onto a short mast usually clears it entirely.
Tree line all around: a red ring. Wooded lots often produce red around most or all of the rim. Moving sideways won’t help much because the trees are everywhere. Height is the answer, or a clearing farther from the tree line. The calculator below helps size that.
Overhead branch: a blot near the center. This is the worst pattern. It means something sits almost directly above the dish, often a single branch from a nearby tree. Because the dish uses overhead sky so heavily, even a small center blot can cause frequent drops. Trimming that one branch or moving the dish out from under it often makes a dramatic difference.
Scattered specks: wind, leaves or nearby objects. Small red dots scattered across the map often come from moving foliage at the edge of the view or from a vehicle, trailer or person very close to a small dish like the Mini. Owners on RV forums describe Minis showing red specks under what looked like a clear sky until the dish was moved away from the trailer or rotated away from it.
Blank band: the geostationary exclusion. A curved strip with no data crossing the southern part of the map is usually Starlink deliberately avoiding the arc of sky where geostationary satellites, like those for satellite TV, sit above the equator. It’s more visible the farther south you are, so homes in Florida, south Texas and Hawaii are more likely to see it than homes along the Canadian border.
How Much Red Is Too Much
The percentage is a useful score, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Where the red sits and what you do online matter just as much.
Reviewers who’ve tracked Starlink obstructions for years describe roughly four bands. At 0%, obstructions cause no outages. From 1 to 5%, you’ll see occasional short dropouts that most browsing and streaming ride through, though gaming and video calls can notice. From 6 to 10%, outages become more frequent and longer, and streaming can buffer. Above about 11%, service is spotty enough that holding a video call for more than a few minutes is hard. Speedify, which builds tools that read Starlink dish data, says most dishes it sees have less than 1% of their sky blocked, so if you’re well above that, you’re in the minority and probably have something specific to fix.
Two dishes can both read 4% and behave very differently. That’s because the dish leans heavily on high-elevation satellites, which are closer and spend more time overhead. A 4% wedge at the rim might cost you a two-second blip a few times an hour. A 4% blot near the center can drop you every few minutes. Analysts at the Mobile Internet Resource Center made the same observation: obstructions near the edge of the view are generally less damaging than large red areas toward the middle.
If you mostly browse, stream and check email, a few percent of rim obstruction is usually livable, since streaming apps buffer through short gaps. If you work from home on video calls, play competitive games or run security cameras that upload constantly, aim for 0 to 1% and nothing near the center. A two-second dropout is invisible on Netflix and very visible when you’re presenting to a client.
Is It Really an Obstruction? Telling Problems Apart
Plenty of people trim trees for nothing because every dropout looks the same from the couch. The app’s outage history is the tiebreaker.
SpaceX says the system measures connectivity ten times every second and reports any outage longer than a tenth of a second in the app. That outage history, usually found in the statistics or outages view, labels each event with a cause such as obstruction or network issue. Before you change anything physical, open that list and look at the last day or two. If most outages say “obstructed,” the map is your guide. If they say network, or the drops line up with evenings when everyone’s online, a better spot won’t help.
Starlink also changed how dishes handle obstructions. In mid-2025 SpaceX described software that uses each terminal’s real-time obstruction map to choose satellites proactively, switching up to ten times a second and steering a fixed dish away from satellites about to pass behind a known obstruction. SpaceX said well-installed terminals with partial obstructions typically reach about 99.9% uptime. That helps with a tree at the rim, but it can’t make a dish see through a branch directly overhead, and it does nothing for network congestion.
| Problem | What it usually looks like | Map shows | Real fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obstruction | Short, frequent drops, any time of day | Red in one or more areas | Raise, move or trim |
| Network outage | Longer drops, often affecting the area | Mostly blue | Wait; check Starlink status |
| Congestion | Slow evenings, not full drops | Mostly blue | Off-peak use; plan options |
| Snow or ice | Drops during storms | Can look obstructed temporarily | Snow melt on; clear safely |
| Wi-Fi or router | Phone drops, dish shows online | Unaffected | Router placement, mesh |
| Power or cable | Dish reboots or goes offline | Map resets | Check cable, power supply |
Two dishes on the same road share the same network and the same satellites, so if one is fine and the other isn’t, the difference is almost always local: the view of the sky, the cable, the router or how the house uses Wi-Fi. When we compared common complaints on owner forums with the outage categories the app reports, the pattern was consistent. Area-wide problems hit everyone at once; obstruction problems follow one dish.
Tree Clearance Calculator
Enter the obstacle that’s causing red and how far away it is. The calculator shows where it sits in the dish’s sky and how much higher, or farther away, the dish would need to be.
Rough geometry for a single obstacle. Real trees are wide and grow; confirm with the app.
The math is simple trigonometry: the angle to the top of the obstacle depends on how much taller it is than the dish and how far away it is. To clear it, you either lower that angle by raising the dish or move far enough away that the treetop drops under the lowest sky the dish uses. For years that floor was 25 degrees above the horizon. In April, the FCC approved SpaceX’s request to let dishes connect at lower angles, down to 20 degrees for some satellite altitudes and 10 for the lowest shells, with 5 degrees allowed only above 62 degrees north latitude, which covers much of Alaska. In practice, clearing to 25 degrees is still the safe target in the lower 48.
Run the numbers on a typical wooded lot and you’ll see why height alone often isn’t enough. A 50-foot tree 60 feet from a dish sitting 15 feet up reaches about 30 degrees above the horizon. To push it below 25 degrees, the dish would need to be about 22 feet up, or roughly 75 feet from the tree at its current height. A 70-foot oak 40 feet away would need the dish about 51 feet up, which isn’t practical. That’s where trimming, a different spot or accepting some rim obstruction enters the picture.
Direction matters, too. Because the dish leans slightly north in the United States, obstacles to the north generally cost more than obstacles to the south, and the calculator’s note reflects that. Trees are also wider than a single point and they grow; the Iowa State University Extension lists silver maple, sycamore and American elm among trees that can add 25 feet or more in ten years, so leave yourself margin.
Fixing Red Areas, Cheapest First
Work from free fixes to expensive ones. Most people solve the problem before they reach the bottom of the list.
Confirm it’s actually an obstruction
Open the outage history and check the labels over a day or two. If obstruction outages are rare, stop here and look at Wi-Fi, the router location or network status instead.
Move the dish a few feet
It’s free and often enough. Shifting a ground dish away from a wall, or a roof dish from the eave toward the ridge, can change which object is the limiting one. Test candidate spots with the kickstand before you drill anything.
Add height
A short mast, a pipe adapter on a J-mount or a ground pole can lift the dish above a roofline or nearby shrubs. Use a sturdy metal pipe and follow Starlink’s mount instructions; a wobbling mast can make obstructions look worse.
Trim the specific branches
Use the map to find the exact limbs in the way rather than topping a whole tree. A certified arborist can thin or raise the canopy without harming the tree. Never trim near power lines yourself; call your utility.
Reset and re-check
After any change, reset the obstruction map, wait about a day, and compare the new complete map and outage history to the old one. Keep screenshots of both.
We found that the cost curve of fixes rises steeply. Moving the dish costs nothing. Mounts and adapters cost tens of dollars. A pole ranges from about $50 in DIY materials to roughly $350 to $600 when an installer sets it in concrete on a wooded lot. Tree work gets expensive fast: a national cost survey updated in September put trimming at roughly $85 to $415 for trees under 30 feet, $215 to $790 for 30 to 60 feet, and $475 to $1,835 for trees taller than that. Trees also grow back, so plan on repeat trimming every few years if a fast grower is your limiting obstruction.
A pole often beats trimming on cost over time for a tree line, while trimming one specific overhead limb usually beats a pole for a center blot. Matching the fix to the pattern is how you avoid paying for both.
Which of These Sounds Like You?
The right reading of the map depends on where and how you use Starlink.
Don’t move anything for at least six hours, ideally a day. Early maps are mostly empty, and the percentage can swing as data comes in. Run your normal day, then check the outage list alongside the map. If the outages are rare and short, you may be fine even with some red at the rim.
Leaves. A map built when deciduous trees are bare can show a percent or two of red that grows sharply once the canopy fills in. If you install between November and April, look at trees in the dish’s view and assume they’ll block more in summer. Re-check the map in June before deciding the spot is good for the long term.
Small dishes sit low, so your own rig, awning, roof rack or a parked car can look like an obstruction, often as scattered specks or a band on one side. Move the Mini a few feet from the vehicle, raise it on a short pole, or rotate it so the vehicle is behind it. Reset the map at each new campsite so you’re not looking at the last spot’s trees.
A balcony only sees part of the sky, so a red band along one side, where the building is, is normal. Put the dish at the outermost edge of the balcony, as high as the railing allows, and face it toward the open sky. If the band covers more than about half the circle, expect regular drops; a higher floor or a corner balcony helps more than anything you can buy.
A red ring is the classic wooded-lot map. Moving sideways rarely helps. Use the calculator with your tallest nearby tree to see whether a pole is realistic. If the required height is beyond about 20 to 30 feet, look for the biggest clearing on the property, even if it means a longer cable run, or trim the trees on the north side first.
Look for things you don’t think of as obstructions: a TV antenna, gutter edge, flagpole, power line, weather vane, the dish’s own mast if it’s tilted, or snow and ice on the dish itself. A dish installed upside down or rotated on a mount can also make the map’s directions misleading. If nothing explains it, reset the map and see if the red returns in the same place.
Snow on the dish can produce outages that look like obstructions during storms. The Standard dish melts up to about 1.5 inches of snow per hour and the Mini about 1 inch, according to Starlink’s specs, so leave snow melt on. Mount the dish where snow sliding off the roof or drifting can’t bury it. Storm outages that clear after the snow stops aren’t a reason to move the dish.
The FCC’s April approval lets dishes at or above 62 degrees north use satellites as low as 5 degrees above the horizon, so the low sky matters more for you than for most of the country. Distant ridgelines and trees on the horizon can now show up at the map’s rim. A clear horizon is worth more up north than elsewhere.
Then the obstruction map has done its job by ruling obstructions out. Check the outage history for network events, test speeds at different times of day to spot congestion, and plug a laptop into the router to separate Wi-Fi problems from Starlink problems. Large homes often need mesh Wi-Fi even when the satellite link is perfect.
Who to Call for Each Kind of Fix
Starlink handles support through your account and app. For physical fixes, these are the people and resources that actually help.
| Who | Use it for | Link or phone | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starlink support | Map errors, outages, hardware faults | starlink.com/support | Included |
| Starlink shop | Pipe adapters, masts, mounts | starlink.com | About $38 and up |
| ISA certified arborist | Trimming specific limbs safely | treesaregood.org | About $85–$1,835 per tree |
| Your electric utility | Branches near power lines | Number on your power bill | Often free for line clearance |
| 811 | Utility marking before setting a pole | Dial 811 | Free |
| Local installer | Poles, roof masts, cable runs | Use the map finder below | About $100–$600 |
Our Verdict
Treat the map as evidence, not a grade. Let it fill for a day, confirm with the outage list that obstructions are really what’s dropping you, and then read the shape: a wedge means move, a ring means height, a center blot means trim. Aim for 0 to 5% with nothing near the center, tighten that to 0 to 1% if you live on video calls, and re-check after the leaves come in. Reset only after you change something, and compare complete maps.
Find the red area, stand by the dish, face that direction and look up at the matching angle. Nine times out of ten, the culprit is obvious once you know where to look.
More questions people ask
Why does my obstruction map look pixelated or streaky?
Since Starlink’s real-time update, the map draws individual satellite paths instead of a smooth fill. Streaks and gaps are normal, especially in the first hours.
Does the obstruction map work for the Starlink Mini?
Yes. The Mini builds its own map in the app. Because it often sits low, nearby vehicles, people and walls show up more often than with a roof-mounted dish.
Can rain or clouds show up as obstructions?
Not as red on the map in the usual sense. Heavy rain can weaken the signal and slow speeds, but the map tracks physical blockage. Snow or ice on the dish can cause storm-time outages.
Should the map be checked before buying a mount?
Yes. Run the Check for Obstructions scan from the planned spot, then leave the dish on its kickstand there for a day if possible. That tells you whether a mount is needed and how high.
Why did my map change after a software update or reboot?
Rebooting clears the cached map and starts a new one. Firmware updates can also change how the dish aims, so a map can shift slightly after updates. Let it rebuild before reacting.
Is a 1% obstruction worth fixing?
Usually not for streaming and browsing. For work calls or gaming, look at where it sits: 1% at the rim rarely matters, 1% near the center can.
Do I need to point the dish a certain direction?
Starlink’s app guides aiming, and in the U.S. the dish typically settles slightly toward the north. Don’t override it to “aim away” from a tree; move the dish instead.
How this page was checked. Map behavior comes from Starlink’s install guides and app, SpaceX’s statements on obstruction handling, testing published by Starlink-focused reviewers, and peer-reviewed measurement research on Starlink dishes. Elevation angles reflect the FCC’s April approval of SpaceX’s request. Tree growth figures come from Iowa State University Extension; trimming costs from a national cost survey updated in September. Illustrations and the calculator are our own and are simplified; your app may look different by version.
This page is independent and not affiliated with Starlink or SpaceX.
Key sources: Starlink · FCC · Iowa State University Extension