Citizen: Local Safety Alerts Reviews

I’ve recently installed Citizen on my phone and I’ve added some of my contacts who currently uses the this app app. The issue I’m having is whenever those contacts text me I have absolutely no way to know that they text me unless I physically unlock my phone and check my text messages. There are absolutely no alerts at all to prompt me to check my phone whenever I receive a text message.

I’ve contacted tech-support after trying everything within Citizen and on my phone to troubleshoot this issue myself. It is taking them over 12 days to simply answer my question as to why this is happening. Meanwhile, this has been happening for months now since installing Citizen on my phone and it is becoming a major inconvenience.

I will give them a few days and if nothing has been resolved I will be deleting Citizen , contacting everyone whom I’ve added and shared Citizen with to let them know that I’m no longer using it. I could also go on and on about the types of notifications that I am receiving in conjunction to the area where I live and the privacy concerns. It’s just not worth the headache in my opinion, but this would make this review too long and the information contained within may not be red because it is so long.

I like Citizen but it would be more helpful if the videos were posted in chronological order or if they had time stamps. I was just following an important event in my neighborhood and I had a hard time figuring out if there were new developments and videos would have helped, especially because the updates being posted in real time were confusing and accurate. Since there is no time stamp on them (unless you select each video individually, select the user, then select the video again) it is impossible to determine if new ones have been added, so you have to keep scrolling through them. It’s very impractical when you have numerous videos to go through. Also, there should be better monitoring of the videos posted (some of them are completely useless). And there should be an age limit. Children should not be playing with Citizen. There was a five alarm fire tonight in my neighborhood and a young boy was playing reporter with his parents’ permission. Unacceptable and disrespectful. Other than that, it’s a very useful app.

Beware of the “premium safety service”/“protect service” which is one quick click (with only a tiny “skip” in the top right corner) and seems like part of the set up process but actually is a $199 (!!!) charge if not cancelled after the 14 day free trial. I find it interesting that if you want to buy a $1 coffee using your phone you have to use Touch ID, or enter every single detail of your credit card, or some form of ridiculous, excessive verification, but they can basically deceive people into buying a $199 subscription with no verification. Not to mention the fact that Apple buries subscriptions within your phone, and the ability to cancel it, so users who aren’t familiar with iPhone minutiae won’t know how to terminate it. Or will have to deal with a huge headache of trying via Apple support. And let’s be honest they won’t refund it after the fact when you get the surprise charge from Apple on your statement and call to dispute it. Which is so messed up cause they clearly designed the set up to intentionally deceive! People are hurting right now and this is what companies that we rely on for Covid updates are doing to its users! And Apple allows it. Disgusting.

I signed up for Citizen over a year ago. Used it very often then all of a sudden, when trying to sign in , I kept receiving a message; retry over count. Tried a few more times, receiving same pop up message. Then received a message to try again in 24 hours. Waited until next evening, tried once again to sign in, same lock out. After 2 weeks of this issue, I emailed support. They told me to do same thing as previous pop up messages. Let them know, already had done exactly what had been suggested and had deleted app and downloaded again before contacting support so when they said to try deleting, had already tried. I decided to try it again, now that tech support was supposedly looking into my account and why this was occurring. Waiting 24 hours -48 hours and deleting app, then downloading again several times over a Month, NEVER heard from support again, I decided to rate & write this review. Such a shame to have a possible useful app tool But, what good is it, if you can’t get signed in and when asking this app Support to help correct/resolve bugs/issues and they don’t, well……..?!!😡

I absolutely love Citizen. I think it’s a genius idea! I can’t imagine that amount of work and details that goes into creating something like this. However I think there are still many improvements and changes that can and should be made. Personally some ideas and things I notice right away that could be changed:
- customizable notifications, for example option to set a miles scale radius of where you want to be notified, specific types of incidents you do and don’t want notifications for, being able to choose notification alert sounds for different incidents
- importantly, it’d be helpful and interesting if there were more details and updates given for these situations. I see a lot of people in the comments saying this as well, one small example is parents asking if the “man with a gun” is actually happening and wanting details because it’s near a school that’s about to end for the day and never getting an answer
- a section available at the bottom bar where you can set up a list of saved customized addresses/cities/locations that you want to more easily check on
- could add at the bottom of the incident links to other sources like news articles

There are all kinds of new features and changes to existing features that could make Citizen better. Citizen is genius and I can see it becoming much more known and widely used in the future! Continued improving will ensure that too.

I like Citizen , but there are several things I find incredibly annoying. First, I just passed an incident but cannot figure out how to post it without video. I don’t want to, nor was I allowed to stand there and record a dozen police cars responding to reports of a home intruder, but I can’t find another way to post it. So the incident isn’t on Citizen and it doesn’t appear that it’s going to be.

Second, I can’t filter out reports by a certain radius. I live in a decent size city, and a report of a house fire or dumpster fire 2.5 miles away from me means absolutely nothing. It’s just annoying. I get constant notifications and now it’s like the boy who cried wolf - I ignore every single one of them because 99% are so far away from me they don’t impact me at all. I’m definitely going to delete Citizen if they can’t sort that out, because now it’s just interrupting me while I’m at work or enjoying time out without giving me valuable information.

Whyyyyyy is there no option to turn off these horribly obnoxious trumpets?? They are SO disruptive I had to silence ALL this app notifications. Look, I get it. The this app app can be a downer & they want to add positive news, but this is a total UX fail. I have pets, & I’m truly happy when a lost pet is found. But 1) I don’t use Citizen to feel good. I use it for helpful safety info. 2) Does my phone need a whole ROYAL announcement? Is the Queen here?? It’s not even a standard alert. Why? It’s jarring & obnoxious. And while it’s great that this app is being used to help locate lost pets, these aren’t helpful at all if I was never notified that the animal was missing. If I HAD been, fine. But it appears those only go out locally, so the “found” alerts just feel like a self-serving way for this app to go, “See?!? We aren’t always doom & gloom!” But, again, I don’t have Citizen to get the warm fuzzies. I want relevant, important info. I’ve been avoiding turning off the notifications for this app entirely, but I’m done. I’ve searched for ways to mute these specifically or change them to normal alerts. It’s too much.

I am working and building a GSOC for work, and while we don’t have the other tools set up, this is a great tool for finding out what’s going around near any of our 68 locations I have to track. My only grip, and its something hopefully the devs will consider is that when using this on a tablet with a keyboard to fill out a GSOC report, it does not flip to landscape. This is a massive 12.9 inch iPad Pro with a keyboard it isn’t convenient to have to take it and rotate it to use Citizen then back to fill out the report. Fix that and you have a great tool. I like having access to things quickly with pictures and videos. Someone said that a parade is not something that should be on here, I disagree it impacts my buildings greatly from coast to coast and I want to know about it and see it.

So great app, great tool, make it rotate to landscape please!!!!

I had no issues with Citizen until yesterday with a new update. I liked looking on the map and zooming in on my area to see what had occurred overnight or when we are heading home from outside the city, I could check which areas seemed to be having a concentration of incidents so I knew which route to take home. Now, the map is partially covered with descriptions of active incidents, which may not even be in my area. I liked being able to click on the incidents I wanted to know more about. Also, it is now only showing active alerts. I cannot zoom in to see past events. I’ve been all through Settings, but have not discovered a way to see past alerts. My city has a lot of crime, so I do have other ways of keeping track of things in my area, but this app was a great resource to find out more info (although, when my neighbor was murdered, it never showed up in this app). I wish this particular update didn’t happen. Not sure if I’ll be using Citizen much longer, as it is no longer giving me the info I need.

While I have seen police/ambulance at the scene of several nearby reports, 95% of the comments I Citizen are useless. For example, a child was missing and to find more information, one would have to scroll through hundreds of comments criticizing the parents, people giving opinions on disciplinary actions that parents should take etc...none of those comments were relevant to the missing child. Citizen needs to figure out a way to allow other users to report a comment that’s useless and after X number of reports- those user accounts are banned. It is useful when comments are from people nearby who have witnessed something as to alert other people but this accounts for about 5% of the comments. They need to fix this or people who use Citizen for legitimate information will stop using Citizen .

this app REALLY needs to allow users to set a notification radius.

For example, I don’t need to be notified about an incident almost 30 miles away from me. I straight up don’t care about it. What I would care about though is everything within about a 1.5 mile radius. But I can’t do that.

Because you don’t have that feature it actually carries a few negative impacts for the users.

1. I am complacent, the this app app gives me the perception that I am being spammed because I am notified multiple times per day about events that don’t and won’t impact me.

2. I don’t actually know how close something might be until I open Citizen . Whereas if I had a radius setting and was notified I would know to be alert right away. Potentially saving precious time.

3. Because I am getting notified of things 30 miles away or further, e.g. Washington D.C. this app ironically entirely fails to notify me of things within the zone I care about the most.

4. I am honestly getting tired of all these notifications that are ultimately meaningless to the original intent or advertised intent of Citizen .

I have uninstalled Citizen because I am so tired of the constant spamming. It’s unfortunate because I really like and support the original intent. But if users don’t have control of their radius then it is ultimately useless.

Once this is corrected I will gladly reinstall Citizen .

I hope this finds the right hands,

Paul Heinrich

I work at a school. We had a lock down situation in which I didn't know what was happening - just that we were in lock down and could not leave our rooms. The incident happened right after final dismissal and I was alone in my classroom, with the lights out and trying to be absolutely silent. I wanted to report the incident on this app but I did not want to show live video or make any sound at all. I thought there would be some way to type an incident report but I couldn't see a way to do that on Citizen . Fortunately the situation turned out to be less dangerous than it could have been and the whole thing was over within 45 minutes, but it would have been great to submit a report to try to get some information about what was going on from the community.

Generally Citizen is good, and the idea behind it is great, but you can't always shoot video or talk.

UPDATE: The always-on location requirement has become even more intrusive (ie you can't use Citizen without allowing always-on location access). One star and deleted.

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Woulda been a 5-star review but Citizen just started prompting for always-on location access EVERY time you open Citizen . Not cool. Annoying enough that I'm now considering deleting an app that I tend to check on a daily basis.

EDIT:
The developer was kind enough to respond to my review clarifying that they do indeed perform the action that I've claimed is intrusive and annoying. But it's ok because they promise to protect my privacy in the process.

"Hi there, this app's mission has always been to keep people informed and protected by using technology responsibly. We ask that you enable your location settings so that this app can work in the background, even when you're not using Citizen , to send you real-time, sometimes life-saving crime and safety alerts. We understand some users are concerned about their privacy when sharing their location data. We can assure you that this app protects all user data by storing as little as necessary to run our safety network. We encrypt all data and connections. And we will never share or sell user data to third parties. If your settings aren't properly configured, you will see a reminder to update them. You can dismiss that modal to continue into Citizen , but it will appear again the next time you open this app."

Opened Citizen after the update and discovered there’s no map any longer to view incidents in my surrounding area (even with location shared & data on). I tried closing and reloading several times without any luck. There’s a video feed now instead, which isn’t helpful because it pushes videos randomly, they’re not organized by time posted or even location nearest to me. I also can’t view the incidents from a birds eye view. Another issue with the videos is if you select an incident to view more, Citizen automatically turns the phone volume all the way up (way too loud) — I keep my volume off for a reason! I don’t want to disturb others if I’m checking Citizen in public. An app should never automatically change your phones volume, it’s not only annoying, it feels like it’s violating how i choose to set up my device.

I have an iphone 13 pro - still having issues. Please fix your app.

I haven’t used any other apps like this, so I can’t say much. However, it’s got a good ui and is easy to navigate. My main issue is that there’s a red bar at the bottom of Citizen screen telling me, no - insisting that I change my location settings for Citizen . It blocks the bottom of the map, and when I select an incident it blocks the little info card that pops up. I get it - you can’t warn me of danger if you don’t know where I am, of course. But it’s SUPER annoying not to be able to close that dialogue bar. My issue with keeping location limited to while using Citizen is not privacy related, it’s battery related. Location services chew up my battery life. If my phone dies, not only can’t Citizen warn me, but I can’t call for help either! Let us disable that dumb bar each time we open Citizen . I don’t mind being reminded, this is pushy though. Loses two stars for that.

I’ve commented in MANY of their posts they r posting the wrong area!!!! They post crime is happening right outside my place (stabbing a, shootings and stuff) and this app says it’s happening right outside my place and miles away as well by saying it’s in a farther away neighborhood. It doesn’t seem like a big deal until I seen my neighbor send her 7yr old son outside to walk her dog right after a shooting happened and the police hadn’t found the suspect yet. I questioned her and she said Citizen said it happened in Woodlawn, which is no where near us so she let her child out thinking it was safe. I’ve even contacted this app customer service to make aware and they told me to basically kick rocks and they are not bothering to fix anything. Just an FYI, my neighbor has been considering suing about it bc her child did end up caught around gunfire bc of the suspect and police fighting. Child is ok thankfully but the mother is livid. And this app just doesn’t care 🤷🏼‍♀️

this app exists because of two principals, the incident (the informing and alerting of the public) and users updating/commenting, sharing and recording of that incident in real time. Both principals make the platform unique yet the developer doesn’t consider ideas, changes or updates offered by the users.

An review by someone a year ago asked for the ability to filter the map by time ranges. Seems simple enough and surprising it was available from the beginning yet a year later it still can’t be done. The map is a cluttered mess and any tech who works on Citizen should see that. All we get is red colored dots for more serious, not necessarily the most recent and pertinent things happening.

This is only one of a few updates that have been shared. So to the developer, listen to your users who know what changes would make for a better experience.

It has just landslided downhill as it’s been updated. Even with location on all the time, I rarely get notified about incidents and there’s no way to full screen the map to see what’s around you. Plus the “zoom out” button makes no sense anymore. It used to just show you a wider area of your location. Now it just centers on seemingly random location and my location will be on the far right or far left of the screen. It also used seems it used to show everything that was going on around, no matter how big or small. Now it always has no reports, green. There can’t be absolutely NOTHING going on. When I first started using Citizen , there were reports all over at any point in time. Now it’s like Citizen picks and chooses what to show you. I’ve sort of forgotten about Citizen honestly. And it’s inching towards the list of apps to be removed for inactivity.

I updated my app today and this new version did away with the mode where I could see news/incidents happening all over New York City (my city) and instead gave me “this app News,” showing me what’s going on around cities across the country. The truth is, I don’t care about other cities and it’s not why I downloaded Citizen. I care about what’s happening around my neighborhood and my city. It let’s me “follow” New York City, but instead of a videos page, all I get is a screen full of text telling me brief description.

this app developers: you’d better give us the option of opting out of this national news and bringing back the NYC video screen of your incidents, or yours going to see people deleting Citizen . I’m now thinking about deleting Citizen because it doesn’t serve any purpose to me if it’s prioritizing other cities. Change it back!

Great concept. Two issues need to be addressed:

1) The developers need to enable “filtering of events” so that the map only shows events from the time frame the user designates. For example, you should be able to filter for events that have occurred in the past 24hrs. Or even events that have occurred over the past 2hrs. Or even a map that shows only events that have been reported within the past 30 minutes...

2) In baltimore we frequently get reports of carjackings etc that are 10 hrs off from the the time that it actually occured. Citizen states that “carjacking was reported on june 6” but does not report the time that the carjacking actually was called in to 911, or even the time that the victim states it occurred. Instead, it gives a time many hours later.

I’ve allowed Citizen access to my location while Citizen is running, not always. It used to be fine with this: I continued to get alerts for things that happened in the place I last opened Citizen (which is what I want - I look at recent crime near home, from home, but not near work or from work, 20 miles away). Citizen had a little notice at the bottom of the screen asking me to change my location setting, but it didn't take up much space or interfere with my use of Citizen . Recently, Citizen is becoming more and more obnoxious about asking me to change its location access. It’s notable that the developer has evolved the “give me your location always!” screens to be more frequent, cover more of the screen, and be less easily dismissed. As of this version, it covers the whole screen and a dismiss icon only shows up after the notice has been on screen several seconds.

Other than that major impediment to usability, I like Citizen . I live in the city and appreciate knowing where and when crime has been happening lately. I do wish the default radius were something I could configure, but that’s not a huge problem.

They need someone to moderate this more. An Xmas parade is not an incident, to be marked by red. Police blocking off the road for an event is not cause for alarm. What is cause for alarm is when there’s a “woman exposing herself” type event and there’s like 10 comments of people being overly sexual saying they wish they didn’t miss it, people threatening others and cussing up a storm.
Also it hinders Citizen when people post these grainy blurry smudged videos of the aftermath where they can’t hold the phone upright, obviously not a developer issue but it’s nonetheless an issue that takes away from Citizen . Like you’re warning me about someone with a loaded gun but you’re showing me a blurry video of you waving the phone around in the darkness and you’re yelling into the mic. It’s basically 2020 and people still don’t know how to use a phone.
The idea is good and this is still useful but those issues are major.

I live in a major US city and used to use Citizen when I saw or heard activity nearby so I could get more info about what was happening while staying a healthy and safe distance away. I had it set to only track my location when I opened Citizen since that was when I needed it. Now when I try to open Citizen it shows me a fake alert about “four gunman” nearby and demands I change my settings to allow it to ALWAYS track my location even when Citizen is closed. It literally won’t let me use Citizen unless I do this. Well I won’t and I am uninstalling it and you shouldn’t install it in the first place. That is shady and a horrible tactless way to try and get me to give them my personal data. Given all the active shooter situations in the US in the past couple years, the fake alert is exploitative and low. Don’t use Citizen, don’t give them your data.

The new update is terrible. It really needs to be fixed. I used to use Citizen all the time and even livestream on occasion. Now I almost never use it after the recent update. The UI is horrible. Not user friendly at all.

You can’t zoom out of a one mile radius of wherever you are... you have to manually scroll all over the map to see what is happening in the Bay Area. It takes forever to scroll all around the entire Bay Area outside the of the 1 mile circle. No point in even doing it... I want the old app version back where you can zoom out and look at the entire Bay Area and then zoom into one section or not zoom in. I don’t want to have to scroll all around the entire map and not be able to see the rest of the map.

It needs to be fixed or I might as well delete Citizen . I know I’m not the only person.

I really liked this app until last week’s update—you know, the one that promised it would play better with the battery. Shortly after the update installed, and despite light usage phone usage, the battery began to drain at an alarming rate. Checking battery usage, I learned that this app was the culprit, consuming , on average, ~70+% of my charge. The problem persisted despite logging out and was only resolved when I, reluctantly, deleted it.

Your bad, this app. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

ETA: Meghan, you’re as good as your word. My iPhone battery performance is back to normal and the rating is being boosted accordingly. Thanks for being so responsive!

I’ve been using Citizen for the last year and a half and have loved having a better sense of what is going on in my neighborhood and the surrounding area. But the latest update has taken things from four stars to two. I’ve had small gripes with notification but overall my app experience had been good. Then this recent update required changing location settings from “while using” to “always on” in order to continue using Citizen . I NEVER let any apps have always on access to my location. Wether companies claim to keep that data confidential (and actually do) or not, in the age of data breaches, lack of data use transparency, and third parties having access to user data, it’s a no go. Will no longer use Citizen unless this is changed.

How about having an option to play video or go live video since many users like to record an incident just to get viewers. Aside from that I’m thankful for Citizen. I’m more aware of what’s happening around me than before. It’s great knowing that I can be notified if I’m in a dangerous area but I think having that option would be great that way we wouldn’t have unnecessary recordings of someone’s apartment or their pets thats nowhere near the main incident. If its live or a recording we get the option before doing so. Thanks this app hopefully this can be added in a future update. thanks.

I have not had a chance yet to use Citizen because it’s not available in my location. I got Citizen so that when I’m in the city I go to school in I can stay up to date on activities going on there and know what places to avoid. Therefore it would be nice if they had a search feature so that if it’s not available for your current location you can search up other locations you may be going to so you know where to avoid or what’s going on in that location. It’s a great concept for an app I just wish it wasn’t made to only notify you for what’s going on in your location. Or even setting a certain mile radius would be nice too because then maybe it would be available in a location say 20 miles away if not at your current location.

I hate this update, please go back to the old one. It was my go to app and now I hate to check it. Not user friendly!!!
- hate the red zone in “alerts nearby”
- when one looks at greater view in your home city, the list has NO ORDER TO IT. It’s not sorted by time, distance or severity of incident. It literally makes no sense. Please listed chronologically.
- One of the features I specially liked was to look at another city and to be able to VIEW A MAP of an area and zoom in on a particular area. Now it’s just a list of incidences and I really don’t know how they relate to an area that I want to look at. There is no map outside of your home city. Just make all the cities identical.
This may be one of the worst updates of any app in recent experience and I am one of the foremost authority’s in this field.

Update: When you introduce an update and have 20 comments and all are one star except for one, you know you’ve done something wrong.
Remember each comment here represents thousands of users. I used to check Citizen many times a day now it’s just a few. It is borderline useless.
The recent update even made it to a local talkshow. Several callers commented about the reason change and none of it was favorable.

I downloaded Citizen after watching a typical middle of the street South Philly battle of words at 2am, and also just for the entertainment of the crazier headlines. but like soooooo many other people on here i wasn’t about to give them “always on” location data, especially when I haven’t even used Citizen yet. scrolling through most of the reviews the update to this didn’t apparently change the quality of Citizen and just reduced the quality of the service, and their bland copy and paste response as to why is just an insult. give people the option and just make an app that works correctly regardless of the settings. I didn’t even want to waste my time reviewing this but I really want to pile on the low star reviews to hopefully make them change it back so I could actually eh to see if I even like Citizen

this app is useful to have in order to be informed. At times i am home and i hear the sirens going outside and i really don’t have to wonder what is going on in the neighborhood because it comes up. this app is also practical to know what streets are more dangerous or what crimes are taking place in your area. Also they can be ahead of the news since the members of citizens record whats going on at the scene you get a closer view. My only complaint is that when i open Citizen when i am outside my home it doesn’t work, but that might not be this app’s direct fault but that of my internet connection. I have told others about it... it is a great app to download. And its free!

First, I used to be able to see what was going on in my neighborhood - now I’m told to look at the crime gossip outside my area without any focus on events close to my location. Second, I used to be able to look up old reports (at least it’d be nice to see the headline?), but they’ve censored the history. No reason to censor it. Finally, the recent feed fights over what’s popular and what’s actually local - so I end up getting updates i’m not looking for as i scroll through the feed. It’s becoming a small mess. Will update stars if they can make it work right.

Sure, it’s helped me be more aware that it’s a dumb idea to walk around SF, iPhone in hand (put that away!) and let me know what that peculiar odor was a couple of weeks ago.

But I *love* this app for its delightful random surprises, like the time the guys were fighting at Macy’s, flinging scarves at each other, or when the woman was dancing in the street holding a hot dog. It let me know the time the man at a nearby BART station tried to assault people using a sandwich as his weapon and informed me when he returned later that day, tossing Skittles. You can’t make this stuff up, but you CAN video it.