Frequently asked questions

No, and no app should tell you otherwise. No authority in any of our markets accepts a phone reading as a certified sound pressure level. A phone has an uncalibrated microphone in an unknown position, and its own software has already changed the signal before any app sees it.

What authorities do act on is a diary: every occurrence, dated, in order, with how long it went on and what it did to you. That is what Earwitness builds, and it is why the diary is the product. The readings are there to make the diary more credible — to show the pattern, the times and the relative loudness — and every one of them is labelled with its grade so nobody can mistake it for an instrument reading.

Each measurement carries a word, not just a colour, saying how far it can be trusted:

Diary only means you described it and no level was captured. Indicative is a phone microphone. Cross-checked means two devices agreed. Calibrated mic is a supported external microphone with a calibration on record. Class 1 instrument is a figure imported from a real sound level meter.

The app will never average across two different grades to produce a nicer-looking number. A mixed figure would be indefensible the first time anyone asked how it was calculated.

They can argue it about a spreadsheet or a notebook. It is harder here. Each entry is sealed into a chain where every record locks the one before it, and the chain is stamped by an independent trusted timestamp service, so the sealing time does not depend on your phone's clock. Attachments are sealed by their contents, so replacing the file behind a sealed letter is detected.

The pack carries a verification code the recipient can check. Two honest limits: verification tells you a record is unaltered since it was sealed — it cannot vouch for what you typed — and if you delete one of your own attachments, verification reports a missing file rather than tampering, because those are different things.

Saved clips mute speech. You keep the thumping, the music, the machinery and the pattern; the words are muted. That is deliberate — you are documenting a disturbance, and a recording of a private conversation is both a different thing legally and the fastest way to lose the sympathy of the person reading your case.

Recording law differs by state and country. See Recording and the law before you record anything, and if in doubt, keep the diary without clips. A diary with no audio at all is still a diary a council will read.

Maybe not on its own, and we would rather say so now. A contested hearing where the level itself is in dispute usually needs a calibrated measurement — a hired meter or an acoustic consultant's report. Earwitness is built to carry that: import their figures and they sit at their own grade alongside your diary, with your weeks of dated entries providing the pattern their one visit cannot.

Nothing on this site is legal advice.

A session runs with the screen off and is designed to survive a night, with a lock-screen notification so you always know it is running. Expect to charge overnight — measuring continuously is work for a phone. If a session is interrupted, the diary records that it was interrupted rather than pretending the time was quiet.

Log it afterwards. An entry you write the next morning is marked Diary only, with no level attached, and is clearly dated as entered later. That is honest and still useful. What the app will not do is let you backdate an entry to look like a live capture.

Yes, and the app prompts you to. A record showing noise on eleven nights out of fourteen is far stronger than one showing eleven nights of noise and silence about the rest, which reads like only the bad nights were written down.

Yes — a supported wired microphone, with its calibration on record, earns the Calibrated mic grade. Bluetooth microphones are not supported and are refused rather than quietly accepted at a lower grade: a wireless audio path changes the signal in ways we cannot account for.

Yes, and it helps. Two devices capturing the same event can be cross-checked, which raises that event's grade to Cross-checked. It is the single cheapest way to make your readings more credible.

Recording and the diary work offline. Trusted timestamps and address lookups need a connection — entries made offline are sealed and then timestamped when you are next online, and the diary shows which is which.

Check your address in the app before you pay anything. Coverage is built pack by pack and a council is only marked verified once its actual rules, quiet hours and complaint fields have been checked.

The app says so, in those words. It will not show you a nearby council's rules, or a national default, and call them yours — a resident acting on another council's quiet hours is worse off than a resident told nothing. You can pick your council by hand, and the diary, the measurements and the pack all still work; you just do not get the verified checklist and quiet hours.

Yes. The pack is a document — lodge it with a council, give it to a landlord or letting agent, hand it to a strata or body corporate manager, or pass it to a solicitor. It is not tied to any council's system, which also means no council has to be a customer for you to use it.

One case, paid once, no subscription: the council-ready PDF and Word pack rebuilt as often as you like, your council's verified rules and checklist where covered, the verification code, hired-meter import, cross-checks and the signed declaration. The diary itself, your exports and the proof of integrity are free and stay free.

Nothing. You keep the diary and you can export everything you have entered at any time. Holding someone's own evidence hostage over a payment would be indefensible in a product like this.

Yes — a case is a dispute, with its own address, its own council and its own sealed chain. Mixing two disputes in one record would weaken both.

Your case lives on your device. Cloud backup is yours to switch on or leave off, and our hosting is in Australia. Full detail is in the privacy policy.

No. We never contact anyone you are complaining about, and we do not notify your council — you decide when and to whom a pack is sent.

Yes. Delete a case or your whole account from inside the app. Export first if the dispute is still live, because a deleted case cannot be reconstructed by us.

The pack carries a verification code. Enter it on the verification page to confirm that the record you are holding matches what was sealed, and when it was sealed. See Verifying a pack.

No. Earwitness is bought by the resident and produces an ordinary PDF or Word document. There is nothing for an authority to subscribe to, install or administer, and no resident is locked out because their council is not a customer.

As graded indications, exactly as labelled. Anything marked Indicative is an uncalibrated phone reading and should not be compared against a statutory limit. Figures marked Class 1 instrument were imported from a real meter and the pack records the instrument's details. We do not mix grades into a single figure.