About this app
What SoundSpotter does
SoundSpotter is the offline custom sound recognition app for the 37.5 million Americans with hearing trouble — and for anyone whose phone can't recognize their specific doorbell, oven timer, dog's whine, or smoke alarm. Apple's built-in Sound Recognition is great but limited. You can't add an arbitrary sound. Custom training (electronic alarms only) routinely fails — Apple Community threads document waits of 12+ hours with no result. There is no event log, so you can't review what the phone heard while you were in the shower or asleep. SoundSpotter fixes all three gaps: — Train any sound in 30 seconds. Tap Record. Hold the phone near the sound (your doorbell, your microwave beep, your cat's distinct meow at 5am). The app captures 5 samples and trains an on-device CoreML classifier using SoundAnalysis transfer learning. No server. No cloud. — Per-sound haptic patterns. Doorbell = three short pulses. Oven = one long. Smoke alarm = SOS. CoreHaptics fires exactly the pattern you want. — Persistent event log. Every recognized sound is timestamped and saved. Scroll back: 'the oven beeped at 7:14pm; the dog whined at 3:02am.' — Background listening. BackgroundTasks keeps the classifier alive when the app is closed. — No mic data leaves the phone. The model lives in the app's sandbox. The audio is never recorded — only the classifier output (timestamp + label) ever gets stored. For the deaf, hard-of-hearing, and the very-curious — the sound recognition Apple should ship.
Features
Built to be useful, not noisy.
Sound library
List of trained sounds with name, sample count, last-fired timestamp
Train new
Record 5 samples of a sound; SoundAnalysis transfer learning on-device
Live listen
Real-time classifier; haptic + on-screen indicator when sound detected
Event log
Chronological list of every detection across all sounds
Haptic patterns
Per-sound vibration pattern editor (short/long/SOS)
Why it exists
The problem
Apple's built-in Sound Recognition can't be expanded to arbitrary sounds, custom training fails silently, and there's no event log — so DHH users can't review what their phone 'heard' while they were in the shower or asleep.
What's different
How SoundSpotter stands out
SoundSpotter is the only iOS app that lets users train an arbitrary custom sound classifier in 30 seconds on-device using CoreML + SoundAnalysis transfer learning, fires per-sound CoreHaptics patterns, and persists a timestamped event log — Apple's built-in is restricted to a preset list, Ava and Otter handle speech o…
You might also like
All apps →
Skein
Lifestyle
Yarn stash & row counter
Pawmark
Lifestyle
Your dog's life, captured.
Strand
Lifestyle
One second a day. A year in three minutes.
Heirloom
Lifestyle
Capture the stories before they're gone.
Readyhold
Lifestyle
The binder for the day everything breaks.
Sprout
Lifestyle
A gentle garden notebook.
FAQ
Questions about SoundSpotter
How much does SoundSpotter cost?▾
SoundSpotter is free. All features are included from day one — no subscription, no in-app purchases, no paid tiers. Everything you see in this listing works the moment you install it.
Where does SoundSpotter store my data?▾
On your device. SoundSpotter is built privacy-first: no account is required, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers. Nothing is uploaded to a server we control — the app works without one.
What platforms does SoundSpotter support?▾
iOS, on iPhone and iPad. You can find the latest availability on this page.
How do I get support for SoundSpotter?▾
Use the Support link on this page, or email support@allthingsn.com. We answer every message and keep responses on the same thread.
The story
Meet SoundSpotter — Teach your phone the doorbell
Read the full write-up · 4 min →
More in Lifestyle
