Questions

More than background music, less than a GPS nav session. The app uses layered detection that keeps the heavy work asleep until something interesting happens. SoundSense is designed to stay under 10 percent battery use per hour of active listening. Full disclosure, always-on microphone access is not free. Read the battery deep dive.

It depends on the sound. A smoke alarm across the house, yes. A microwave beep through a closed door, probably not. SoundSense works best when your phone is in the same room as the sounds that matter. We are working on a mic puck for other rooms, but that is a future release.

No. SoundSense is a supplement, not a replacement. Keep your primary life-safety equipment. A smoke detector is required by code for a reason. A hearing dog is a trained being. SoundSense works alongside both, not instead of either.

Your phone captures short audio buffers in memory, runs them through a sound classifier on the device, and immediately discards the audio. Nothing is written to storage. Nothing is sent to a server. Not even in crash reports. You can verify this by putting your phone in airplane mode; the app keeps working.

Apple's Sound Recognition is a good starting point and runs entirely on-device. SoundSense goes further in three ways. It scales alerts to urgency, so a fire alarm and a microwave beep are never treated the same. It uses context, where you are, what time it is, what is normal for the environment, to decide how loudly to interrupt you. And it keeps a rich timeline of every detection, so you can review your day. Apple's feature is a useful baseline. SoundSense is built specifically for people who depend on sound awareness every day, and both can run together. Read the full comparison.

Yes. SoundSense delivers alerts through visual notifications and haptics. It does not depend on your hearing aids or implant to work. A dedicated Apple Watch app is coming later. If you use Made for iPhone hearing aids, audio cues can also route there if you want them.

Not in 2026. iOS came first because it lets us guarantee the privacy and performance story on one platform. Android is on the roadmap, after the iOS app earns it.

Not in the free version. Family sharing and caregiver alerts are part of SoundSense Pro, which is launching after the free app proves out. If this is important to you, join the waitlist and tell us how you would use it.

Yes. The classifier ships bundled with the app. There is no server. Put your phone in airplane mode, disconnect Wi-Fi, walk into a basement with no signal, SoundSense keeps listening and alerting. The only thing that needs the network is cloud sync of your sound names and settings, which is optional.

Common alerts like alarms, doorbells, and appliance beeps are ready out of the box. You can enable or disable any of them. Custom training lets you add your own sounds in just a few short recordings.

At launch, the iPhone app will mirror notifications to Apple Watch through standard iOS behavior. A dedicated Watch app, with custom urgency haptics and a standalone timeline, is coming later as part of SoundSense+.

English at launch. Additional spoken-language localization will follow based on what the community tells us matters most.