The most powerful safety app for today’s world. Download Citizen to feel safer at home or out, get real-time safety alerts and live video of incidents happening near you, updates on natural disasters or protests, and know if your loved ones are near a dangerous incident.
Citizen notifications have urged people to evacuate burning buildings, deterred school buses from nearby terrorist attacks and have even led to a rescue of a 1-year-old from a stolen car. Citizen may notify you of a crime in progress before the police have responded. It’s meant to protect you and your community — please use it responsibly.
NEW! See friends on your Safety Map: Know their safety status in a glance and find out if (and when) they are near a dangerous incident in real-time. You can turn on Ghost Mode to keep your location private at any time.
Real-time Safety Alerts: Location-based notifications help you avoid potentially dangerous situations.
Live Breaking Video: Watch live video of an incident unfold from different angles or broadcast live from the scene.
Keep Your Community Safe: Report incidents right when they happen to protect the people around you.
Citizen also offers the Protect subscription, to help protect you and your loved ones. You can read the Terms of Use here: https://citizen.com/privacy/protect-supplemental-tos
New UI is awful. Integrating the media with the factual updates means that all videos must load just to get the official information, which significantly slows down the app. Also, clicking in the map circle zooms to show your location and the incident, which means you have to zoom all the way back in to the location to see which intersection it’s at. This is unnecessary because most viewers live in and know the city they’re viewing and don’t need their relative location highlighted.
Used to be great, now sucks! Impossible to re-install! Keeps sending duplicate verification codes via text, then attempts to also send verification codes to the correct e-mail address, however they never make it! When you toggle/switch screens between the app & text messaging, e-mail, citizen app reverts back to text message verification, and you get the same code numbers 2ce for each instance where you’re required to request a code. You’ve got to be kidding me! This is ridiculous! It’s a loop!
Useful for finding out about crimes and emergencies nearby. However, I find the new UI confusing and hard to navigate. Also, the locations of incidents are always listed by the name of the neighborhood, not the city. Most of the neighborhood names in my area are obscure and no one uses them. I have to zoom the map out to see where the incident is located. City and street names would be much more useful.
I guess this app might be useful if you live inside the limits of a large..ish city. If you live in rural area, from what I can tell, there’s no info whatsoever. So, totally useless for me. Or maybe I need to adjust some settings… Oh wait, there aren’t any to adjust. Great idea and concept.. failed on the delivery.
Have repeatedly asked that the map of my area be updated. So far, after multiple requests, still nothing. They keep saying the maps come from a 3rd party source. Doesn’t help of the map isn’t current. And the new upgrade SUCKS! If I want crime from other cities I can look it up. Now I get less local and more from far away. It really sucks.
There’s been so many changes to the app design that, so many things that were important and of use on the app are no longer available. Updates on what’s going on in your area has changed drastically. Your area looks “safe” on the map yet, the gunshot/fireworks detectors never show up in the areas that gunshots happen. Adding family before, you can see their location and message them. No use in adding anymore. Don’t waste money on a app that’s now broken. Most reviews are old and not up to date.
As a service, it’s wonderful and the mission and purpose is amazing. As an app, it’s unusable to me because it doesn’t have light mode, only dark mode, and that hurts my eyes and makes it barely visible out in the sunlight. I don’t see many apps do this, usually they have both light and dark depending on user preference. Either way, good service but I’d never be able to use it unless theming options become available. Hope to see this app around in the future! Great idea.
The layout now is HORRIBLE! U don’t have the option as before with what u choose to look for at the bottom now there’s only 2 buttons to choose from Which makes this app not Interesting! It’s hard to find what you’re looking for now. The original layout should’ve been left alone & just updated the look of the buttons. If u allow the users to record a emergency U shouldn’t allow the Camera/ Videos that are Shaking it makes it Hard To see what’s going on Especially for a person that has Seizures.
It’s a great idea for an app, but I just installed it yesterday and I’m already being bombarded with notifications with no options to narrow or change what I’m seeing. If I could only see notifications for things happening in a mile or 2 radius, that would be great! I don’t need notifications for things happening 10 miles away
Inconvenient app. Unless u have all the time in the world. It was pretty cool before, when they had all the videos together, and u could just scroll up. Now u have to go item by item, to view the videos. Very inconvenient for a single mom. We don’t have that kind of time to spare. I’m assuming they made it this way now, so people can pay to watch the feeds. Not going to spend money to SEE if that’s the case. No thank u. Quality is what brings quantity! I’m sure I’m not the only one deleting.
Used it for all of 2 minutes. Wouldn’t do a thing without my location even though I have it a nearby address and enables location only while using app. Annoying ads trying to get you to buy bs services which likely will be difficult to end. If you want to give free trials, do it right by trusting your service is exemplary enough that people will but them without forcing a credit card before evaluation.
The concept is great. The alerts not so much. I have set areas surrounding to be alerted on and I still end up getting alerts from across town at 2am. Jarring. It also gets kinda creepy with friend location, so you end up using ghost mode a lot. The app is clumsy to navigate, and some buttons are not obvious what they do. A few of them I haven’t touched for fear of going live. It is difficult to sort out the noise from the relevant and incidents aren’t always chronological.
I like this app, it helps me to stay updated and aware of what’s going on in my neighborhood which allows me to adjust my commute to avoid trouble. If I may make a suggestion – please change notification sound every time there’s COVID update, it sounds very alarming and I assume that something huge happened, but instead it’s just same old annoying statistics. Other than that, very useful and comprehensive app.
When the app was first released, it worked beautifully – but lately it’s absolutely horrible. Constant freezing, forced restarts etc. It’ not even worth the effort any longer. I can use various scanner apps to monitor calls in my community, of which many (unfortunately) are of a serious nature and never appear on Citizen. if you’re going to do it, do it right or move aside for someone who will.
VIDEO PLAYBACK SUCKS!!! The videos that are posted only play back a few seconds and then stop. It happens with all videos in any event that has them. THE APP NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Other than that its mostly informative about events in the immediate area. Update: I got in touch with tech support and even they couldn’t figure out what it wrong. So it STILL SUCKS.
This last update really broke the app and has made it unusable on my Android phone. Every time I open it I hear the sound of a video playing, but it is behind the window and I can’t get to it to shut it up. It’s the same video every time. Then when I go to read one of the posts it closes it ad jumps back to the main window after a few seconds or less. This makes it impossible to read the posts. This was especially bad because all of the emergency information for Austin during this winter storm was in those posts but I couldn’t read them.
Not a bad idea, but it’s buggy as hell, sometimes can’t find my location when other apps can, sometimes notifications work, sometimes they don’t, I don’t have the option to see what’s going on in some nearby communities until I’m there, and the moderation of the comments section is total garbage. Edit: after the last update, the amp’s a mess. Thumbnail pics of 2 day old crimes cover up incidents currently happening, events are disappearing and reappearing on the map. Uninstalled.
I like being notified about dangers going on in my neighborhood, state, or nation. What I don’t like is being notified for the winner of the Superbowl that has NOTHING to do with safety. I also really don’t like that this app frequently overwrites my default notification settings or creates new temporary notifications (for example for the Superbowl). On top of that, those notifications use new sounds I don’t recognize that give me a jumpscare that I have to go search for the sound source.
Ok I LOVE this app! HOWEVER… it has some major downfalls/ missed opportunities. Where it falls short is that you should be able to sort the incidents how you see fit (i.e. most recent, verified, type of incident, etc). It also doesn’t show 80% of the incidents until you zoom EXTREMELY far in. And you should be able to scan through areas outside of your own for people who travel/ commute outside of their immediate area.
The app was amazing until after the update. Now, there’s just way too many things going on in the screen and I keep accidently pressing something and all I’m trying to do is move around the map. On the home screen, make it simple, just the map… make tabs… not put everything into 1 home page and expect my fat fingers to tip toe through the screen.
This app USED to be great. Loved it. I live in a big city, it helped a lot when working nights. However, all this app does now is covid 🙄 No other alerts. Nothing updates appropriately, it pushes the ‘get contact tracing’ bs way too much. Wrong locations. I actually turned off using the location services outside of the app due to both contact tracing and inaccurate locations all the time. It was so much better months ago.
Not much info in my area. Even though we had hundreds of calls for emergency aid, just showed two events. The photos and videos submitted were terrible quality. Usually a person holding their phone in the car and the pictures were more dashboard and window shots than the actual emergency. Now my last gripe. Why the heck does it cost $20 a month. Netflix isn’t that much. I say $20 a year or $1.99 per month. When you drop your prices please look me up. I’m willing to try the app again.
The user interface kinda sucks. It would be a more bearable if the main map detailing incidents would stay put when trying to move the map around. If you try to drag the map left or right, the map toggles to the additional screens left and right, cause you to lose the map and your place on it. It’s very redundant to have this swiping feature when right at the bottom of the map there are buttons to toggle the different screens. Other than that, it does what it says.
After using it lightly for years, just found out there’s no free option. I’d keep it if there was an ad supported version or if they made certain features require payment (like viewing audio and video). But by going to a fee only model most people won’t use the app and won’t provide the info that made the app useful. Good luck. I’m done. Uninstalled.
While I like the app in principle, it needs a lot more features and selectivity to be useful. I don’t need to be constantly bombarded with alerts from areas I never go to but the app considers “nearby”. I don’t need stories about car or house fires, but there’s no option to turn notices off. I would return if and only if the free version of the app had a good filter that let me select the area I’m interested in following.
This app is great! I see a couple other people mentioned the GPS. I have a galaxy phone and it asks me if I want to keep location always on or only while I use the app. The GPS not only tracks where you currently are, but anywhere you go so you dont have to enter in addresses all the time. You do have an option to enter in address to see reports in other area. You can also navigate around the city and state by moving the map around and zooming in or out. Only had for 7 hours now and I love it
I get a message that says “We’ve updated the News Tabs”. “Swipe up to see more videos”. Well it doesn’t swipe up. It jams my Android phone, it doesn’t close and I have to reboot. I uninstalled this app twice and it made no difference. What an inconvenience to jam my phone in a non responsive window. I’m not liking the improvements with the bugs. The version I have is 0.1048.1
Citizen used to be great but with the latest update it is cluttered with COVID contract tracing information that cannot be disabled in the UI. I used to get a lot of push notifications and now I randomly get them, if at all. You should be able to disable the Contract Tracing UI that’s above everything else. Also, hitting the back button on the action bar now closes the app rather than going back a screen.
The recent update to the app has destroyed what made the app so great. I get that you want to centralize things to where the end user is, but now it’s so difficult to see what’s happening around the city so we can alert those who may be within imminent danger. Please revert to the old setup and perhaps have an option for the user to set feed by distance, time, and saved neighborhoods. There has been a large number of users saying the same thing so I hope the change will come. Thank you.
Had this on my old phone and it worked great. Recently purchased a new phone, downloaded the app, and everything is changed. I don’t get any local updates of what is happening in my area. I get alerts for miles away and for every other major city across the country including NYC. Whose bright idea was it to change to this horrible, stupid upgrade. Just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The app is useless if I don’t know what is happening in my own area. I have deleted this worthless app!
The new UI is a big step backwards. There is now a prominent “Explore” section taking up the bottom of the screen which shows useless information from around the country. I don’t need to know about road closures or fires 2000 miles away from me. It’s just clutter and not only is it useless but it seems they are now showing less of what I actually use the app for, incidents in my own neighborhood.
Uninstalling. The notifications on this app have gotten completely out of hand. They ignore your settings and add new custom sounds all the time. Just now I heard someone shout “touchdown!” from the other room and thought someone broke into my house, but it was just a citizen alert about the superbowl winner. What does that have to do with public safety anyway!? (Nothing). And that’s just the most recent example. Anyway, good riddance
Can’t look up streets on the search bar. For example. I have an adress “Vermont and Pico Los Angeles” you’ll only get cities. When you click on a link sent by someone it only takes you to the “download app” section instead of opening up the actual accident. Also many times when you are looking for an specific accident you will not find it on a map no matter how close you zoom in. It will disappear. And randomly appear another day.
It’s good for what it is but a few complaints… 1 – I don’t want to see what is “trending” 200+ miles away when I open the app… 2 – they changed it with the last major update, but I liked it better when I could minimize the list of incidents below the map, you can’t anymore… 3 – my opinion, we should be able to rate the quality/content of videos people post and after so many negative rates, people should lose the privilege of posting videos. (I want to see the incident, not a face talking)
This app is starting to genuinely frustrate me, I can’t even open the app or view any of the alerts that I get because it stays stuck on the map “loading” and saying error. I’ve uninstalled the app, turned on and off my WiFi, which is pretty good, yet it still refuses to work. I don’t know what was added to this app, but I’ve been having issues with it around late May to early June
It’s really, REALLY glitchy and hard to use. Doesn’t respond well to touch, despite pressing certain buttons. Shows me the same footage over and over but I can’t change to a new area, or explore the app. Theoretically, could be an awesome app… But I think it still has a lot more work to be done before it can be used as intended.
The app only gives me notifications occasionally. I’ve tried Un-installing and making sure permissions are set, but I still have the issue.. other then that, I love that the official 911 calls are recorded so you can hear and confirm it’s not just someone reporting hearing “gunshots” when it’s clearly fireworks.. really do appreciate the app and it’s nice to know what goes on around your area.
I wish there was a way to set notification preferences within the app. I would like to be notified of incidents within my immediate vicinity, but I keep getting notifications of things happening miles away in different cities, and all it does is stress me out. So I turn off noticications instead… which means I might miss out on important info. Please update this app to include distance based notifications that the user can set themselves.
Its ok. But recently Im getting notifications from all over the city. If Im only subscribed to a specific area, don’t send push notifications for anything outside it – period! It’s too much in a city like Philly. You cant adjust notifications either. So when they pull someone from the river 30 miles away, you get a push. Im about to uninstall it or completely deactivate notifications, which makes the app useless. Prioritize developing options for notifications!
Highly recommended by someone in my community. Great concept and seems to be well-liked and well-supported. However, after installing, I was shocked to see that 1) the monthly subscription was priced so high, and 2) my credit card information had already been staged to be charged after the 30-day trial. The latter is pretty heavy-handed. I believe in paying for good products that are well-supported. However, $49/month is 10 times too high, and beyond the reach of many. Uninstalled.