Everything you might want to ask before you trust an app with your safety.
Straight answers about what Safety App UK does, what it deliberately does not do, where our crime data comes from, and how your information is handled. If your question is not here, ask us and we will add it.
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The basics Getting started SOS and emergencies Recording and evidence Your trusted circle The map and crime data Safer routes Privacy and your data Price, trial and billing Devices, battery and coverage Groups and organisations Still need help
The basics
What the app is, who it is for, and the one thing it is not.
What is Safety App UK?
Safety App UK is a personal safety app for people walking, running, commuting or travelling anywhere in the UK. It does three things at once: it shows you what the official police data actually says about the streets around you, it helps you choose a route that keeps you out of the areas with the worst recorded record, and it makes sure that if something starts to go wrong, the people you trust know about it within seconds.
The part that matters most is the part you do not have to remember to use. If you walk into an area the map has flagged as high-risk, the app can put itself into SOS mode — alerting your circle, sharing your live location and opening a video feed — without you touching the phone at all.
Who is it for?
Anyone who ever walks home in the dark. In practice that means people commuting late, students crossing a city at night, runners on quiet routes, delivery riders and night-shift workers, people meeting someone they have not met before, and parents who want a teenager to have a fast way of raising an alarm that does not depend on them staying calm enough to make a phone call.
Nothing in the app is specific to one group. The situations it is built for are ordinary, which is rather the point.
Is this an emergency service? Does it replace 999?
No, and we want to be blunt about it. Safety App UK is not an emergency service and it does not contact the police, ambulance or fire service on your behalf. If you are in immediate danger, call 999.
What the app does is the work you cannot do while a situation is unfolding: alerting several people at once, showing them exactly where you are and how that is changing, and recording what is happening so that it still exists afterwards. Those are the things people reach for their phone to do and never manage in time.
Think of it as the layer that runs alongside 999 rather than instead of it. Your circle can be watching your location and heading towards you while you are still on the phone to an operator.
What does it actually include?
A live safety map built on official police data and verified community reports. Safer route navigation that weighs recorded risk, not just distance. Automatic SOS mode, which starts on its own when you enter a high-risk area. Manual SOS, by button or by shaking the phone. Live location sharing with your trusted circle. Encrypted automatic incident recording. A live video broadcast to your circle while SOS mode is active. And community incident reporting, so people can flag what they have seen.
The SOS button and the Trusted Circle alert are free for everyone. Everything else is included in one Premium subscription (£2.99 a month or £29.99 a year). There is no higher tier, and nothing important is held back to sell you later — which would be a strange way to build a safety product.
How is this different from just sharing my location with a friend?
Location sharing tells someone where you are. It does not tell them that something is wrong, it does not tell them to look at their phone, and it does not record anything.
Safety App UK is built around the moment things change: the alert goes out to everyone in your circle at once, the video feed shows them what is actually happening rather than a dot on a map, the recording is preserved and encrypted, and in the case that matters most, none of it depends on you having the presence of mind to press anything.
Does it work without a data connection?
SOS alerts, live location and live video all need mobile data or Wi-Fi to reach your circle. In a spot with no signal at all, no app on any phone can send an alert — anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
If the connection drops in the middle of an incident, the app keeps trying and delivers what it can as soon as signal returns, so a tunnel or a dead patch does not silently swallow an alert.
Getting started
What the first five minutes look like, and what the app asks of your phone.
How long does setup take?
A few minutes. Install the app, allow location access, add the people you want in your trusted circle, and decide whether automatic SOS mode is switched on. Everything can be changed later, and nothing is locked in by your first choice.
If I only have five minutes, what should I set up first?
Your trusted circle. The map works without it, but an alert with nobody to receive it is the one part of the app that fails quietly. Two people who reliably look at their phone are worth more than a long list.
Which permissions does it ask for, and why?
Location, so the map, the routing and any alert you send can show where you are — and so automatic SOS mode can tell when you have entered a flagged area. Notifications, so you and your circle can actually be reached. Camera and microphone, used only once SOS mode has started, for the recording and the live video. Motion sensors, if you want the shake trigger.
You can decline any of them. The features that depend on that permission then simply do not work, and the app will tell you so rather than pretending to protect you.
Do the people in my trusted circle need the app too?
No. They receive your alert and a link to your live location on any phone, with nothing to install and no account to create. Having the app makes it easier for them to follow what is happening, but it is not a requirement — which matters, because the person most likely to help you is not always the most app-enthusiastic person you know.
Do I have to keep the app open for it to help?
No. The shake trigger and automatic SOS mode both work with the phone in your pocket and the screen off. Keeping the map open is useful when you want to see flagged areas as you walk, but nothing about your protection depends on it.
SOS and emergencies
How an alert starts, what happens next, and where the app deliberately stops.
How does an SOS start?
Three ways, so that at least one of them works in the moment you need it. The main one is automatic: if you walk into an area the map flags as high-risk, the app can start SOS mode on its own, with live video, whether or not you have a route set. The other two are yours to use — press the SOS button if you see something that worries you, or simply shake the phone, which works without unlocking it or hunting for an icon.
There is no safe word and no voice trigger. We took that route out deliberately: it required the app to listen continuously, and it failed exactly when people were too frightened to speak.
What is automatic SOS mode?
It is the feature the app is really built around. You do not need a route planned and you do not need to do anything at all: if your position crosses into a high-risk area, SOS mode starts by itself. Your circle is alerted, your live location is shared, and the video feed opens — so there is a record, and there are people watching, from the moment things could go wrong rather than after they already have.
It covers the case no manual trigger can, because almost nobody reaches for a phone before something happens. You choose whether to switch it on, and you can cancel anything it starts.
What counts as a high-risk area?
An area that stands out in the recorded police data for the kinds of offence that matter when you are on foot — robbery, violence, public-order incidents — together with verified community reports nearby. It is a judgement made from published data, not a label anyone has attached to a neighbourhood by reputation.
The app holds those areas on the map and notices when your position enters one. That is the signal automatic SOS mode watches for.
What happens the moment SOS mode starts?
Your trusted circle is alerted immediately and can watch your live location as it moves. Recording begins, and a live video feed opens to them so they can see and hear the situation instead of guessing at it from a map pin. Everything captured is encrypted and stored, so it survives whatever happens to your phone.
What if it starts by accident?
Cancel it, and your circle is told straight away that it was a false alarm. False alarms are expected, they are not embarrassing, and they are certainly not charged for — a system you are nervous about setting off by mistake is a system you will hesitate to use when it counts.
Can I turn automatic mode off for places I know well?
Automatic SOS mode is yours to switch on and off, so if you walk a flagged route every day and would rather not be alerted on it, you can. Most people leave it on and simply cancel the rare alert they do not need, which takes a second.
Will the app call the police for me?
No. It alerts your circle and gives them everything they need to act, including calling 999 themselves and telling the operator precisely where you are.
This is a deliberate line. Automated emergency calls from apps generate false callouts at scale, and nothing should sit between a person in danger and a trained operator.
Recording and evidence
When the app records, where it goes, and what it is worth afterwards.
Does the app record me all the time?
No. Nothing is recorded until SOS mode starts. The app does not listen to your day, does not bank audio in the background, and has no hidden always-on capture. Before an incident, the only thing it is paying attention to is your position against the map.
If automatic SOS mode is on, is the app listening to me?
No. Automatic mode watches your location against the flagged areas, not your microphone. There is no voice trigger and no safe word for it to listen for — the camera and microphone come on only once SOS mode has actually started.
Where is a recording stored, and who can see it?
Incident recordings are encrypted and stored so that they survive even if your phone does not — a recording that only exists on a device someone has taken from you is not evidence of anything.
They belong to you. They are not browsed by staff, not sold, and not shared with anyone as a matter of course.
Can I delete a recording?
Yes. It is your recording and you can remove it whenever you want. One word of caution: if there is any chance you will want to report the incident later, keep it until you are sure. A deleted recording cannot be brought back.
Can a recording be used as evidence?
It can be handed to the police or to a solicitor, and a time-stamped recording made while something was happening is far more use than a memory reconstructed days later under stress.
Whether any particular piece of evidence is admissible or decisive is a matter for the police and the courts. No app can promise you an outcome, and we will not.
Is it legal to record someone in the UK?
Recording for your own personal safety is generally lawful, including in public places. What you do with a recording afterwards — publishing it, for example — is a separate question with different rules.
We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. If you are thinking of publishing something that identifies another person, take proper advice first.
Your trusted circle
The people who actually receive the alert — the most important setting in the app.
Who should I add?
People who are likely to look at their phone and likely to act: a partner, a housemate, a parent, a close friend, a colleague on the same shift pattern. Two or three reachable people beat ten who might be asleep.
It is worth spreading them a little — someone nearby who could physically reach you, and someone reliable who would definitely answer.
Can they see where I am all the time?
No. Your circle sees your location while you are sharing it with them or while an alert is active. The rest of the time your movements are not on display to anybody, including us.
Can I change or remove someone?
At any time, and without a fuss being made about it. Relationships and circumstances change, and the list should change with them.
What do they actually see during an alert?
That you have raised an alarm or that SOS mode has started for you, where you are and how that location is moving, and the live video feed when the situation allows one. That is enough for them to judge whether to call you, come to you, or call 999 — which is the decision they need to make quickly.
What should someone in my circle do when an alert arrives?
Open the location link first, look at the video if there is one, then decide. If anything on that feed suggests real danger, call 999 and give them the location from the link. If it looks like a false alarm, a phone call to you settles it in seconds. It is worth telling the people in your circle this in advance, so the first alert they ever receive is not also the first time they have thought about it.
The map and crime data
Where the numbers come from, and the honest limits of what they can tell you.
Where does the crime data come from?
Two sources, and only two: the official UK police data published at data.police.uk, and community reports that have been verified. We do not build flagged areas out of local news stories, social media posts or rumour.
That is a deliberate restriction. A safety map is only ever as trustworthy as its worst source, and news coverage tracks what is dramatic rather than what is frequent.
How current is it?
Police data is published monthly and always lags real life by a few weeks. So the map is an accurate picture of a recent period, not a live feed of what is happening on a street tonight. Any app claiming live crime data is either using a very loose definition of live or is not being straight with you.
Why is a crime shown at a spot where nothing happened?
The police deliberately anonymise locations by snapping each report to a nearby fixed point — a junction, a landmark, the middle of a street. It stops individual victims and addresses being identified from an open data file, and it is why crimes appear to cluster on particular points.
Read those points as roughly around here, never as at that address. It matters especially if you are looking up somewhere you are thinking of living.
Why are violent and sexual offences shown as one figure?
Because that is how the police publish them at street level, and for a good reason: splitting sexual offences out at an individual street point would make it far easier to work out who a victim was. It is a protection built into the source data, not a gap in our app.
Does a high number mean an area is dangerous?
Not on its own, and this is the single most misread thing about crime data. Busy city centres record more crime largely because vastly more people pass through them; a quiet area with low numbers may simply have fewer people to be victims and fewer people to report anything.
Under-reporting is real too — a great deal of crime never reaches the police at all. The map is context to help you make your own judgement. It is not a verdict on a neighbourhood, and we will not turn it into one.
Why does the map sometimes disagree with how a place feels?
Because the two measure different things. Lighting, footfall, sightlines and how well you know a street shape how safe a place feels; the data records what was reported to the police over a period of weeks. Both are worth listening to. If a street feels wrong, that is information the map does not have.
Can I check a specific address or postcode?
Yes. The Check an address tool on this site shows twelve months of police data for any UK postcode — the total, the monthly trend and a full category breakdown — and it can compare two postcodes side by side, which is far more useful than either number alone.
It runs in your browser, needs no account, and works whether or not you have the app.
What are community reports, and how do you stop them being abused?
Users can flag something they have seen so that other people nearby know about it — the kind of thing that never becomes a police report but is worth knowing an hour later.
Reports are verified before they influence the map. An unmoderated reporting feature turns very quickly into a tool for prejudice about particular places and particular people, and we would rather have fewer reports than that.
Safer routes
How routing weighs risk, and what it does when there is no good answer.
How does a safer route differ from a normal one?
A standard maps app optimises for time. Safer route navigation also weighs the recorded crime picture along each option, so it may put you on a slightly longer main road instead of the quick cut-through between two estates.
What if there is no genuinely safe route?
Then the app says so rather than dressing one up as safe. Where every way through carries recorded risk, you are given the choice: the fastest route, or the one passing the fewest flagged areas.
Which of those matters more depends on the night you are having — sometimes being home in eight minutes is the safer option. That is your call to make, and the app gives you what you need to make it rather than deciding for you.
Do I have to set a route for the app to protect me?
No. Automatic SOS mode works wherever you are walking, route or no route. If you cross into a high-risk area it starts on its own. Routing exists to help you avoid those areas in the first place, not as a condition of being protected.
Will a safer route always be slower?
Often it is almost identical, sometimes a few minutes longer. You see the options with the difference spelled out and you choose — nothing is forced on you.
Does a safer route guarantee anything?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. It lowers the chance of walking through the areas with the worst recorded record, using data that is weeks old and incomplete. It cannot know about anything happening right now, which is precisely why the SOS side of the app exists.
Privacy and your data
An app that knows where you walk has to be held to a higher standard than most.
Do you sell my data?
No. Your location history, your recordings and your trusted circle are not for sale to advertisers, data brokers or insurers, and they never will be.
The subscription is what pays for the app. That is the whole reason there is no incentive to monetise you instead.
Who can see my location?
The people you have chosen, while you are sharing with them or while an alert is active. Not the public, not other users, not advertisers.
Is my data encrypted?
Incident recordings are encrypted, and data in transit is protected in the usual way. The full detail of what is collected, why, how long it is kept and what your rights are under UK GDPR is set out in our Privacy Policy.
Can I get a copy of my data, or have it deleted?
Yes to both. Those are your rights under UK data protection law, not favours we grant. Ask through the contact page and we will deal with it.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
Cancelling ends the subscription. If you also want the account and its data removed, say so and it will be deleted — you do not have to justify the request.
Would you hand a recording to the police?
Not on a whim. Your recordings are yours to share, and sharing them is your decision. Like any UK company we comply with valid legal orders when we receive them, but we do not volunteer our users material.
Price, trial and billing
Two plans, one set of features, no small print worth hiding.
How much does it cost?
Premium is £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year (2 months free). Accounts that have not used a free trial before get 7 days free first. The SOS button and the Trusted Circle alert are free for everyone.
Is there a free version?
Partly. The SOS button and the Trusted Circle alert are free for everyone, always. Auto-SOS, the full map, safer routes, live video, alerts and messages are Premium. A safety app has to be paid for somehow, and the usual answers are advertising or data — neither of which belongs anywhere near a record of where you walk at night.
Does the trial include everything?
Yes, every Premium feature, for the full seven days. The trial is for accounts that have not used one before, you need a payment method to start it, and we remind you 2 days before it ends.
What happens when the trial ends?
If you have not cancelled, the subscription starts at the plan you chose: £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year. If you cancel at any point during the seven days, you are not charged at all.
Can I cancel any time?
Yes, in Google Play › Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions, with no cancellation fee. Nobody at our end has to approve it. Deleting the app or your account does not cancel the subscription, so cancel it in Google Play.
Is there an annual plan or a family plan?
There is an annual plan: £29.99 a year (2 months free), renewing every year until you cancel. If you stop the renewal we do not refund the current year, and you keep access until the end of the period you paid for. Refunds go through Google Play only. There is no family plan. Organisations can license the app for groups — see the section below.
Devices, battery and coverage
What it runs on, what it costs your battery, and where the data reaches.
Which phones does it run on?
Android first, with an iPhone version planned. If you want to know the moment it arrives on your platform, ask through the contact page and we will tell you.
Does it drain my battery?
Continuous location use costs battery on any app — that is physics, not a bug. Safety App UK is built to keep background use modest, and the genuinely expensive parts, live video and active recording, only run once SOS mode has started.
Does it work anywhere in the UK?
The map and safer routing are built on the police data published through data.police.uk, covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Alerts and location sharing work wherever your phone has a signal.
Can I use it abroad?
Safety App UK is a UK product and the crime data is UK data. Alerts to your circle will still reach them, but there is no map coverage outside the UK, so automatic SOS mode has nothing to work from there.
Does it work on a smartwatch?
Not yet. It is on the list of things worth building properly rather than quickly.
Groups and organisations
For universities, employers and councils covering people who travel alone.
Can an employer, university or council license this for a group?
Yes. Group licensing is available for universities, employers and local authorities — night-shift teams, lone workers, students, care and outreach staff, and anyone moving between sites after dark. Write to ggshop@safety-app.uk and tell us roughly how many people you are covering.
Would the organisation be able to track its people?
No, and this is not negotiable. A licence pays for access; it does not create a surveillance dashboard. Each person keeps their own trusted circle and their own control over when location is shared.
A safety tool that doubles as a staff tracker stops being used, which helps nobody.
Still need help
Ask a person — the answers here started as somebody’s question.
My question is not here.
Send it through the contact page and a person will answer. Questions that keep coming up get added to this page.
I want to report a bug or suggest a feature.
Both are welcome through the same contact page. Tell us your phone model and what you were doing when it went wrong, and it will be looked at far faster.
Where can I read more?
See How it works for the setup walkthrough, Features for the full list, the Crime map for how the map is built, Check an address to look up a postcode right now, and the blog for what the police data does and does not show in particular cities.
Try it for a week before you decide.
Every Premium feature free for 7 days if you have not had a trial before. Then £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year, cancel whenever you like in Google Play.