FAQ

No, to both. It's best-effort software running on your phone's own sensors, not a certified safety or medical device, and it doesn't guarantee a crash or emergency will be detected. If you're conscious and able, always call emergency services (e.g. 112/911/999) yourself first — the app's alert is a supplementary channel to people you personally choose, not a dispatch service. Full detail in the Terms of Service.

A countdown appears (30 seconds by default) with an "I'm OK" button. If you don't tap it, the app texts every emergency contact you've configured with your location, optionally calls your primary contact and attaches photos (both off by default, toggled in Settings), and scans for nearby Bluetooth devices twice in the following couple of minutes. See the Help & Guide for the full flow.

The app has no server or alternate delivery path — an SMS, call, or MMS needs at least some carrier signal to send, the same as any other message from your phone. If you grant the optional Phone State permission, a live session shows a warning banner when there's no signal, so you at least know an alert wouldn't get through right now. If sending fails, it's retried automatically once signal returns.

Yes — Settings has a "Test notification system" button, no session needed first. It checks that everything a real alert depends on (emergency contacts, permissions) is actually in place, tells you if something's missing, and only sends anything once you confirm. The test itself is real, not a mock — it mirrors exactly what a real alert would do with your current settings: an actual SMS to your emergency contacts (clearly marked as a test), a real call to your primary contact if auto-call is on, and a real MMS photo if you've enabled that too. Worth running once so you know it actually works — just give your contacts a heads-up first.

Every emergency contact you've added gets the SMS. Only your primary contact — the first one in your list — also gets an automatic phone call, and only if you've turned that on in Settings. The app can only call people in your own contact list, never an emergency number (112/911/999/etc.) directly — Android reserves placing an emergency call for the phone's own dialer, so a dispatch number set as a contact almost certainly won't connect. Add real people who can act on your behalf, and dial an emergency number yourself, from your phone's own dialer, if you're conscious and able.

No, by default — there's no server or backend at all. Everything (routes, sessions, contacts, settings) stays on your device until you delete it or uninstall the app. The one opt-in exception is connecting a Strava account, which uploads only the sessions you choose, directly from your device to Strava. Full detail in the Privacy Policy.

Location and SMS are required to start most sessions — the app blocks starting one and tells you exactly what's missing rather than fail later. Everything else (Camera, Phone calls, Bluetooth, notifications, physical activity, phone state) is optional and only gates the specific feature it's for — e.g. no Camera permission just means no incident photos, nothing else is affected. Table of every permission and its exact purpose in the Privacy Policy (§4).

No. Settings lets you pick MapLibre as the map source — free, no-account map tiles from OpenStreetMap, CyclOSM, or OpenFreeMap instead of Google Maps — or leave it on AUTO and the app switches to it by itself on a phone with no working Google Play Services at all. Same for location: a Settings choice lets it use Android's own location service instead of Google's, with no change to what's tracked or why.

No. The only thing exchanged between two paired phones is a short-range Bluetooth signal confirming proximity — no GPS location, contacts, or other app data ever crosses between the two devices. Each phone does record its own GPS route locally (if a standing pairing is active), but that route is never sent to the other phone or anywhere else.

Only if you turn on the separate, opt-in Allow a Guardian to see your far location toggle yourself — it's off by default. A plain pairing only exchanges the short-range Bluetooth signal described above, with nothing going over the internet at all. Turning that toggle on shares your location with a paired Guardian right away (or with every Guardian you're already paired with, if you turn it on after pairing rather than before); turning it back off stops it just as immediately.

No to both, if you don't want either. By default, remote location updates are delivered via Google/Firebase Cloud Messaging, but Settings' push-notification picker also offers UnifiedPush — either with a distributor app you install yourself (e.g. ntfy), or with Incident Detection's own built-in distributor ("Incident Detection (internal)"), which needs no extra app at all. This makes the feature fully usable on phones with no Google Play Services, like GrapheneOS. See the Help & Guide for exact setup steps.

Your phone keeps up to 7 days of a Ward's shared location points cached locally, then clears older ones automatically — both right away whenever a new point arrives and via a daily background cleanup, so nothing within that window should ever go missing while sharing is on. If you don't see anything at all, check that Allow a Guardian to see your far location (see above) is still turned on for that pairing — it's a decision only the Ward can make, and turning it off, or removing the pairing, stops new points from arriving.

Not silently. Turning off Guardian broadcasting, removing a pairing, or revoking access for everyone all require confirming it's you via your phone's own lock screen (fingerprint, face, PIN, or pattern) first. The app never sees that biometric data itself — it only gets a yes/no answer back from Android.

Check-in periodically asks "still OK?" on a timer you set, with no route or motion tracking at all. Gym is the same — no route or motion tracking — but self-confirmed: you tap "I'm OK" yourself any time, on a rolling 15-minute window, meant for workouts where your phone sits on a bench rather than on you. Guardian pairs your phone with someone else's so each of you can tell the other is nearby, alerting if contact is lost — unlike the other two, it does record your own GPS route locally while paired (to mark roughly where contact was last confirmed if it's lost), it just never shares that route with your paired partner. The regular activity types (Bike, Run, Car, etc.) track a full route the same way, visible to you in your own session history.

Yes, if you have a heart-rate sensor paired — heart-rate monitoring isn't limited to workout-type sessions like Bike or Run. A sustained abnormal reading during a drive, a Check-in, or while in Guardian mode still triggers the same Heart-rate alert (see Safety above), escalating to the emergency pipeline if you don't respond — it's there purely as a safety signal for these session types, since none of them are treated as a workout (they don't upload to Strava either — see below).

Training lets you follow a structured workout during a Bike or Run session — one of the app's built-in plans, one you import as a FIT workout file, or one you build yourself in the app, including repeating interval blocks. Each step can show a live target (heart rate, cadence, power, or speed), with a summary afterward of how you did against it. It's entirely separate from crash detection — nothing about following, importing, or missing a training target affects detection or triggers an alert on its own.

Yes — Run, Walk, Car, and Motorcycle sessions can all run GPS-free. For Run/Walk, distance and pace switch to your phone's step counter (or a paired Bluetooth treadmill's own readings, if you have one, which is more accurate). Car and Motorcycle have no step-counter or treadmill equivalent, so a GPS-free session there just tracks duration, with no distance or pace. Crash/fall detection itself still runs in every GPS-free mode, just from motion sensors alone.

A Ward's phone can be paired with more than one Guardian at once, each tracked independently, and a Guardian can watch more than one paired person by switching between them. True simultaneous tracking of several people within a single session isn't supported yet.

Every session can be exported as a GPX file (or FIT, for a GPS-free session) via your device's share sheet, to any app you choose — Strava, Garmin Connect, whatever. If you connect a Strava account in Settings, you can also upload directly, one session at a time or automatically. Connecting Strava is entirely optional and off by default.

Continuous GPS and motion-sensor tracking during a session does use meaningfully more battery than the phone idling — expected for any GPS tracking app. The app will ask to be exempted from your phone's battery optimization, which it needs for reliable detection while the screen is off; without that exemption, some phone manufacturers' aggressive battery managers can suspend the app mid-session.

No. Detection depends on your specific phone's sensor hardware, the manufacturer's own background-process restrictions (some are much more aggressive than stock Android, even with every permission granted), GPS/network availability, and more — all outside the app's control. See the Terms of Service for the full picture, and don't rely on this app as your only means of getting help in an emergency.

A missing permission is a common cause the app doesn't always surface clearly today — for example, a permission granted once can get silently revoked later (after an OS update, a long period without opening the app, or a manual change in your phone's Settings), with nothing in the app pointing this out at the moment it actually matters. We're actively working on adding a clear in-app message whenever a feature you're using turns out to be missing a permission it needs. In the meantime, the quickest check is the app's own Settings → Permissions tab, which lists every permission it uses and whether each is currently granted — you can also check your phone's Settings → Apps → Incident Detection → Permissions for the same information, and confirm nothing you'd expect to be granted has quietly been turned off.

It's not something the app can do at all, by design of the platform: Android only lets a phone's own system dialer place emergency calls, specifically to stop third-party apps from silently calling emergency services — no permission fixes this, even with everything granted. If you've set an emergency number as one of your emergency contacts, the app's automatic call feature will fail to connect it, the same as any other failed call. Use a real person's number instead — someone who can act on your behalf — and dial an emergency number yourself, from your phone's own dialer, whenever you actually need one.

When you add an emergency contact, Android asks which app to pick it with. If you chose something other than your Contacts app and tapped Always, Android remembers that choice and stops asking — so the wrong app keeps opening. This is your phone's setting rather than the app's, and it's easy to reset: open your phone's Settings → Apps, find the app you picked by mistake, then tap Open by default (or Set as default) → Clear defaults. If you're not sure which app it was, use Settings → Apps → ⋮ menu → Reset app preferences instead — it deletes no apps or data, but it does reset default apps, disabled apps, and notification restrictions for all apps at once. Then add the contact again, pick Contacts when Android asks, and choose Just once. The exact menu names may differ depending on your phone's maker and Android version.

Only if Allow a Guardian to see your far location (see the Privacy question above) was ever turned on for that pairing — in that case the other phone does get notified, since it goes through our relay server. A Bluetooth-only pairing has no way to tell the other phone anything once it's removed: it's a private, one-sided decision by design, with no notification sent. The same applies in reverse if a Guardian removes you. Either way, nothing requires the other person's agreement or awareness — it's entirely your call.

Most Bluetooth sensors — including heart rate straps and bike radars — only support one active Bluetooth connection at a time. The usual cause is a bike computer or GPS watch already holding a Bluetooth connection to the same sensor, sometimes alongside its own separate ANT+ connection — ANT+ and Bluetooth don't conflict with each other, so a sensor connected via ANT+ elsewhere can still connect to this app over Bluetooth at the same time. What blocks it is a second Bluetooth connection. Turn off the sensor's Bluetooth pairing on the other device (its ANT+ connection, if any, can stay on), then start your session — the app connects automatically once the Bluetooth slot is free. This can happen with any sensor shared between two devices, not just with this app.

The Sensors tab in Settings and an active session each open their own separate connection to the radar. Leaving Settings open on the radar entry while riding can compete with your session's own connection, so the session screen's bar can drop even though Settings still says "connected". Just don't linger on the Sensors tab once your ride has started, and it won't happen.

No — most affordable BLE bike radars only support one connected phone at a time; a second phone trying to pair just fights the first one for the connection. This is exactly why group radar sharing exists: pair the radar with one phone, and everyone riding together can see the same data over Bluetooth without each needing their own radar unit. This feature is currently experimental — reception on the other phones can be unstable, with occasional gaps or brief stale readings, while we keep improving it.

Make sure the sensor is powered on and close to your phone — most Bluetooth sensors only advertise for a limited time after waking up. Also check it isn't already connected to another device (see the first question above) — a sensor already paired elsewhere often won't show up in a scan at all. If a scan seems stuck, turning your phone's Bluetooth off and back on usually clears it.

A GPS-free Run or Walk session needs either the Activity Recognition permission (so the app can use your phone's step counter) or a paired Bluetooth treadmill to estimate distance and pace — without one of those, the app still tracks duration and detects a possible fall, just with no distance/pace numbers. GPS-free Car and Motorcycle sessions never show distance or pace, by design — driving has no step-counter or treadmill equivalent.

This is usually a GPS-matching mix-up on a route that loops back near itself, like an out-and-back ride — the app can briefly lock onto the wrong point along the route. Try double-tapping the navigation banner or direction-arrow icon — on the main map screen, or the same icon in the Bike/Run computer panel's Max view — to force a fresh GPS fix; the app also does this on its own after it's noticed you've been pointed the wrong way for a while, so it may well correct itself without any input. If it's still stuck, tap Stop navigation and pick the route again to restart it from scratch.