Guardian Mode

The feature for the emergency you cannot reach your phone during. Guardian listens through your microphone for the sounds of danger, and for words you choose, then raises a silent SOS on your behalf.

What Guardian Mode does

Armed, Guardian runs in the background and analyses ambient audio on your device. When it matches a danger pattern it does three things, in this order:

Turning Guardian Mode on

1. Open Guardian

   Home → the Guardian tile (bottom-right of the service grid), or Settings → Safety Configuration → Guardian Mode.

2. Grant the microphone

   If you have not already, Guardian asks. Deny it and you get "Microphone permission is required for Guardian Mode. Enable it in Settings.": nothing else on the screen will work.

3. Flip "Enable Guardian Mode"

   The status chip at the top changes to LISTENING. That is the armed state.

4. Tune it below

   Detection layers, sensitivity, responses and safe words are all on the same screen. Defaults are sensible; you can leave them alone.

Detection layers

Four independent detectors. Turn off any that produce false alarms in your environment, such as a shooting range or a busy workshop.

Detection sensitivity

One slider, three practical settings. It is the trade-off between missing a real event and firing on a slammed door.

Raising sensitivity does not skip the countdown; you always get the 15 seconds to cancel.

What happens when danger is detected

Three response toggles decide what Guardian actually does. All three are on by default, and you should leave them on.

The 15-second cancel countdown

The single most important thing to recognise. When Guardian detects something, a full-screen overlay appears on top of whatever you were doing:

"Possible emergency detected, cancel now if you are safe"

• A countdown runs down from 15.
• If you are fine, cancel it. Nothing is sent, nothing is dispatched.
• If you do nothing, or you cannot reach the phone, a full SOS alert is raised automatically at zero.

Safe words

A safe word is a phrase you would never say by accident but could say out loud under duress. Speak it and Guardian starts the countdown.

1. Scroll to EMERGENCY SAFE WORDS

   Near the bottom of the Guardian screen.

2. Tap "Add New"

   Type your phrase. The placeholder suggests something like "Get away from me".

3. Tap Add

   It appears as a chip in the list. Tap the × on a chip to remove it.

Choosing a good safe word

• Say-able under threat. It has to sound natural if an attacker hears it: "Get away from me", "Please don't hurt me", "I'll call my uncle Peter".
• Not everyday speech. Avoid "help" or "stop"; you will trigger it watching football.
• Three to five words. Long enough to be distinctive, short enough to gasp.
• Add two or three. Different situations call for different phrasing.

Run a silent test

At the bottom of the screen: Test Guardian Mode: "Ensure your sensors and triggers are calibrated."

1. Tap RUN SILENT TEST

   It checks the microphone, the detection pipeline and the connection to the command centre. Nothing is dispatched and no operator is alerted.

2. Read the result

   You get either "Last test passed <time> ago" or "Last test failed", and the timestamp persists so you can see how fresh your last check was.

3. If it fails

   Confirm the microphone permission, confirm you have a data connection, then retest. Still failing? Contact support.

Run this after any OS update, after changing phones, and once a month as a habit.

Battery and privacy

The Guardian screen carries three privacy badges, and they mean what they say:

• E2E ENCRYPTED: audio and location are encrypted in transit.
• DATA PROTECTED: detection audio is only retained in connection with an alert.
• USER CONTROLLED: you choose the layers, the sensitivity, the responses, and you can disarm it in one tap.

Guardian analyses audio to match danger patterns. It is not a transcription service and it is not a recording that anyone browses. The stream only leaves your device when an alert is raised.

Guardian troubleshooting