Support

I started listening but nothing is being detected.

WardSafe only reports sounds it recognises, so a quiet room produces nothing — that is working correctly, not a fault. To confirm it is running, play a test sound near the phone: search for “smoke alarm sound” or “doorbell sound” and play it out loud. You should get an alert within a second or two.

Also check the circle on the Listen tab says Listening rather than Paused, and that Microphone access is on in iOS Settings → WardSafe.

Captions show sounds in brackets but no words.

Word captions need Speech Recognition permission and on-device speech support for your language. WardSafe deliberately refuses to send audio to a server, so if your language has no on-device model it disables transcription instead. Check iOS Settings → WardSafe → Speech Recognition, and Settings → General → Keyboard → Dictation Languages.

Alerts don’t come through when my phone is on silent.

Overriding silent mode requires Apple’s critical-alerts permission, which not every build has. Open Settings inside WardSafe and check Alerts in silent mode. If it says No, keep the ringer on when you are relying on sound — the vibration pattern and the on-screen alert still work either way.

Does WardSafe keep listening when I switch apps?

Yes. It keeps monitoring in the background and still sends alerts. iOS shows a status indicator while the microphone is in use. Tap the circle on the Listen tab to stop.

It credited my child with a word I said.

WardSafe tells voices apart by pitch, which is imperfect — a higher adult voice can be misread. When it is unsure it attributes nothing rather than guessing. Treat the vocabulary count as an indication, not a record.

My child is deaf or hard of hearing. Is the word count meaningful?

Not as a measure of language ability, no — and we would rather say so plainly. A child using sign language can have a rich, entirely age-appropriate vocabulary that a microphone will never see. That is why age-comparison ranges are off by default. Use the app for sound awareness and for your child’s own trend over time, and talk to a speech-language pathologist about their development.

How do I delete my data?

In the app: Settings → Your data. Delete everything removes the copy on the iPhone; Delete cloud copy removes the backed-up copy. To remove the account itself, email us and we will erase it.

Do I have to sign in?

Yes — an account keeps your history safe if the phone is lost or replaced. You only sign in once per device; after that the app works with no network connection, and alerts and captions never wait on the internet.