Every friend you Bond with gets their own colored light on your Totem Compass, called a Bond Light. The color depends on how you Bonded: one at a time, colors follow the order you Bond (your first four are always Pink, Green, Blue, then Yellow); in a Smart Group, each person’s Bond color matches their Touch Crystal on every Compass; and in the Totem Compass App, you can pick colors yourself. Where the light sits, and whether it’s solid or pulsing, tells you where your friend is and how fresh that information is.
The Totem Compass is our answer to a universal problem that nearly everyone on Earth has experienced at least once: getting lost. It’s a screen-free wearable, now used by 65,000+ people in 80 countries, that helps you find your friends without relying on cell service. You just follow the pretty lights.
This guide dives into how those pretty lights work: how Bond colors are assigned, how to check who’s who, how Bond Lights differ from your Touch Crystal and Skin colors, and what every light is telling you.
Each Bonded friend gets their own Bond Light.
The Order of Your Bond Light Colors
When you Bond one friend at a time, your Compass assigns each friend a Bond color based on the order you Bond with them. The first four always follow the same order:
Your first Bond is always pink. 🩷
Your second Bond is always green. 💚
Your third Bond is always blue. 💙
And your fourth Bond is always yellow. 💛
Current Totem software supports up to 8 Bonds per Compass, up from four in earlier versions. If your Compass still tops out at four, update it through the Totem Compass App.
When you remove Bonds from your Totem, future Bonds are added back in the same color order. For the full Bonding walkthrough, see How to Bond Your Totem Compass.
Why You Might Be a Different Color on Each Friend’s Compass
Because one-at-a-time colors are set by order, you could be a different color on different friends’ Totems. It just depends on the order in which each of them Bonded with you. You might be Pink on Sam’s Compass and Yellow on Jess’s.
How to Check a Friend’s Bond Color
You can always check which color a friend is. Move both Totems together so they’re almost touching, and your Touch Crystal will show you that friend’s Bond color. We call it the Crystal Check. After you Bond, your Totems may even do one automatically.
Check which friend is Pink and which is Green in a couple of seconds.
Smart Groups: One Color per Person on Every Compass
If “wait, which one is Jess?” is becoming a recurring campsite conversation, Smart Groups are the fix. When you Bond your whole group at once with a Smart Group, each Touch Crystal locks into its own unique color, and that color becomes the person’s Bond color on every Compass in the group. If Maya’s Crystal is green, Maya is green on everyone’s Totem.
Our guide to 8 Bonds and Smart Groups has the step-by-step setup.
Custom Bond Colors in the Totem Compass App
Want a Purple Bond? Orange? Fuchsia?? The free Totem Compass App lets you name each of your Bonds and assign its color from a much wider palette, so you can make your best friend their favorite color and your little brother the least cool one. You can also show or hide Bonds to keep your Halo focused on the friends you’re looking for.
The App is optional. Your Totem’s default colors work without a phone.
Bond Colors vs. Touch Crystal Colors vs. Skin Colors
Three different things on your Totem have a color, and they’re easy to mix up:
- Bond Lights are the colored lights around the edge of your Compass (the Halo) that represent your Bonded friends.
- Your Touch Crystal color is the color of the Crystal in the center. Without a Smart Group, it’s purely your vibe: tap the Crystal in Compass Mode to change it, and there are 11 different vibes to choose from. It won’t necessarily match the color you are on anyone else’s Totem.
- Your Skin is the physical silicone cover. It changes how your Compass looks, not how you appear on anyone else’s. Our Totem Skins guide covers every color.
Touch Crystal colors are all about your vibe.
What Your Bond Lights Are Telling You
Your Totem changes depending on how you hold it. Hanging vertically, the Touch Crystal shows your own color. Hold it horizontally and it switches into Compass Mode, where the lights show your Bonded friends. Here’s how to read them, straight from the official Totem Playbook:
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
| A friend’s light on the Halo | Bonded and distant | Turn toward the light and walk |
| The light grows or shrinks | You’re getting warmer or colder | Keep going, or turn around |
| A friend’s light moves into the Touch Crystal | Bonded and close | Look up. They’re nearby 👀 |
| A solid light | Active communication with their Compass | Follow with confidence |
| A pulsing light | Communication lost. Their Totem may be off, dead, or out of range | Follow at your own risk, since it shows where they were, not where they are |
How Version 5.0 Handles Inactive Bonds
Version 5.0 added one more light behavior. When a Bond hasn’t shared an updated location in more than two hours, your Compass collects it into the Touch Crystal instead of leaving an out-of-date light on the Halo. A Bond collected this way pulses. It isn’t deleted, and it comes back to the Halo once that Compass is active again.
So since Version 5.0, a pulsing light in the Crystal means “stale,” not “nearby.” The upside: the lights on your Halo are more likely to point to friends with current locations.
Why a New Bond Starts in Your Touch Crystal
Whenever you add a new Bond, that friend’s light collects into your Touch Crystal as soon as Bonding is complete. That’s because you’re standing right next to them, so don’t be alarmed if they don’t have a light on your Halo right away! Below, two Totems become each other’s Pink and are collected right away.
The new Pink Bond Lights are collected into the Crystal right after Bonding.
Once your friend moves farther away, their Bond Light moves out onto your Halo, and you can start navigating to them.
Finding Connection Through Beauty and Light
Beauty is one of Totem’s four core values. As a rule, everything we build has to make the world a more beautiful place.
Bond Lights are our favorite example. They’re more than indicators: they let you put the screens away and connect with people on a genuine human level during life’s most beautiful moments. The Totem Compass turns what could be a stressful moment, feeling lost, into something simple and even a little magical.
If your crew is getting Totems, the Totem Compass Bundle builder lets you customize the best Bundle for your group size, for up to eight people, with a Skin and charging for everyone. The bigger the group, the lower the price per person, and you can split the payment with friends at checkout using Paysquad.
As always, let the lights guide you. 🫶
Build your group’s Totem Bundle →
Already have your Totems? Here’s how to Bond them.
