Vigilant Ear: Deaf Sound Alert
Robert Palmer · Utilities
Independent analytics for this App Store listing. AppTracker is not affiliated with Robert Palmer.
Chart standing · US
What changed · US
Listing changes AppTracker has observed for this app in this storefront — new versions, price moves, rating shifts, and store copy.
NEW — The map now shows a distance scale at the bottom, always visible, so you can tell how far away things are. NEW — Wind on the map: whenever the weather radar is on, light arrows show which way the wind is blowing, anywhere in the world, updated every hour. BETTER — Captions in loud places. On iPhones with the enhanced captions, an improved speech model makes far fewer mistakes in noise: in a loud bar on an iPhone 17, German captions went from 45% of words wrong to 20%, and Russian from 19% of characters wrong to 9%. Quiet rooms gain too: German from 8.4% to 6.4%, Russian from 5.6% to 3.2%. The same model captions English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. It replaces the old one by itself over Wi-Fi (about 730 MB). BETTER — The first word of a sentence is no longer cut off, and captions are more accurate overall: on an iPhone 17, word errors fell from 6.7% to 5.4% in English and from 10.5% to 8.9% in German. FIXED — Long captioning sessions no longer use more and more memory (about 135 MB more each hour before). FIXED — A phone call that takes the microphone no longer closes Vigilant Ear. Listening comes back by itself when the call ends. BETTER — Weather warnings show their official title in your language. In Arabic, a "Tropical Storm Watch" is no longer translated word for word into a wristwatch. NEXT in the warning panel steps through several warnings. BETTER — Arabic captions are far more accurate on iPhones with at least 6 GB of memory that don't use the enhanced captions: the same recording went from 43% to 24% word errors on an iPhone 17. Hindi captions spell better there too, with character errors down from 25% to 15%. BETTER — On an iPhone set to another country's region, German, French and Italian captions now use their own country's speech recognizer. German word errors fell from 25% to 9%. FIXED — The last sentence before a pause no longer goes missing. BETTER — Vigilant Ear does far less work when nothing is happening: about 80% less on the main thread at idle on iPhone 16 and 17. BETTER — Traditional Chinese uses Taiwan wording, and several Russian, Arabic and French labels are corrected. BETTER — Remote Link's video is bigger, and captions stay clear of it. IMPORTANT — Linked phones (Constellation) are now always encrypted. Phones running Vigilant Ear 1.1.6 or older need to update to join. And, miscellaneous improvements to base functionality.
Ratings breakdown · US
The star breakdown behind this app's rating in this storefront.
Screenshots
About
THE DIRECTION A SOUND CAME FROM — AND HOW FAR AWAY That is what other sound-alert tools leave out. Vigilant Ear turns the iPhone you already own into a sound radar for the Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and CODA community: sirens, alarms, knocks, a crying baby, severe weather, and the voices around you — each one placed on a live map with its direction, rough distance, and a haptic buzz, the moment it happens. It also tells you WHO is speaking. Live captions separate the people around you by voice, and link nearby iPhones into one shared picture of the room. All on-device. Designed for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users who rely on visual captions and alerts. It's a visual, haptic tool - not built for blind users. The interface is high-contrast dark by design, and every alert is distinguished by shape and icon — never by color alone — so it works for color-blind users, too. Using on-device AI, it identifies hundreds of everyday and emergency sounds in real time and estimates their direction and rough distance — nothing is sent to the cloud or off your device. Vigilant Ear is an experimental research and accessibility aid — not a certified or life-saving device. Always use your own situational awareness. ALWAYS FREE: • Live captions of nearby speech (Speaker Mode), separated by voice • Live text to speech of captions to any bluetooth connected audio device (Beats, iPods, hearing aids) • Real-time alerts — alarms, sirens, knocks, doorbells, a crying baby, a person approaching • Official Weather warnings and alerts — US (NWS), Europe (MeteoGate), Japan (JMA), China (CMA), Korea (KMA), India (NDMA), Canada (ECCC), Australia (BOM), and Brazil (INMET) — gated by geographic position of your device. Fed by our relay so you never connect directly to a foreign government's servers. • Live radar map with directional guidance, multi-target tracking, and haptics • Alerts appear on your Apple Watch too, even when your iPhone is asleep as long as the app is running (even minimized) • Siri, Shortcuts & Action Button — ask "What's around me?" (or type it to Siri) for a spoken-and-on-screen summary of nearby sounds, and start or stop listening hands-free • 300+ on-device sound classifications — your audio or telemetry data never leaves your device • Earthquake alerts if a deep rumble (infrasounds nobody can hear) is recorded with later confirmation from the USGS. POWER PACK+ — optional, one-time charge • Translation — captions converted into your language, on-device • Constellation — link nearby iPhones into a shared, more precise picture of sounds (acoustic mesh/biangulation/triangulation) • Music ID — name the songs playing around you • Remote Link — reach someone who isn't with you, using video and text. No audio at any point, so nothing depends on hearing at either end — and it gives you a way to sign with someone. You send a code; they join free, without Power Pack+. • Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) — Load your own sound model of classifications using data you can also collect in-app. Power Pack+ is free to try for your first 90 days; after that, captions and alerts stay free forever and a small one-time fee keeps the glamorous extras. No subscription, ever. Privacy first: all listening, transcription, translation, and sound classification run entirely on your device. The only exception: if you use Music ID, a short audio fingerprint — never raw audio — goes to Apple's Shazam service to name the song. Compare that to other apps! Built for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Stay aware. THE UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR, FOR REAL Science fiction promised a device that simply understands — no setup, no picking languages. Vigilant Ear is the closest thing yet: it detects the language being spoken on its own, separates the voices, and captions every speaker in the room in your language, live and entirely on your device. The app can also "speak" the captions to any bluetooth enabled device such as Beats headphones, iPods, or hearing aids.
What's new · 1.1.12
NEW — The map now shows a distance scale at the bottom, always visible, so you can tell how far away things are. NEW — Wind on the map: whenever the weather radar is on, light arrows show which way the wind is blowing, anywhere in the world, updated every hour. BETTER — Captions in loud places. On iPhones with the enhanced captions, an improved speech model makes far fewer mistakes in noise: in a loud bar on an iPhone 17, German captions went from 45% of words wrong to 20%, and Russian from 19% of characters wrong to 9%. Quiet rooms gain too: German from 8.4% to 6.4%, Russian from 5.6% to 3.2%. The same model captions English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. It replaces the old one by itself over Wi-Fi (about 730 MB). BETTER — The first word of a sentence is no longer cut off, and captions are more accurate overall: on an iPhone 17, word errors fell from 6.7% to 5.4% in English and from 10.5% to 8.9% in German. FIXED — Long captioning sessions no longer use more and more memory (about 135 MB more each hour before). FIXED — A phone call that takes the microphone no longer closes Vigilant Ear. Listening comes back by itself when the call ends. BETTER — Weather warnings show their official title in your language. In Arabic, a "Tropical Storm Watch" is no longer translated word for word into a wristwatch. NEXT in the warning panel steps through several warnings. BETTER — Arabic captions are far more accurate on iPhones with at least 6 GB of memory that don't use the enhanced captions: the same recording went from 43% to 24% word errors on an iPhone 17. Hindi captions spell better there too, with character errors down from 25% to 15%. BETTER — On an iPhone set to another country's region, German, French and Italian captions now use their own country's speech recognizer. German word errors fell from 25% to 9%. FIXED — The last sentence before a pause no longer goes missing. BETTER — Vigilant Ear does far less work when nothing is happening: about 80% less on the main thread at idle on iPhone 16 and 17. BETTER — Traditional Chinese uses Taiwan wording, and several Russian, Arabic and French labels are corrected. BETTER — Remote Link's video is bigger, and captions stay clear of it. IMPORTANT — Linked phones (Constellation) are now always encrypted. Phones running Vigilant Ear 1.1.6 or older need to update to join. And, miscellaneous improvements to base functionality.
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