Something I’ve wanted to see added to phones for a while now is shooting detection. It’s a bit of a tricky sell, because even if sound data is analyzed locally on a device, people would probably be sussed on their microphones being active while their phones are in their pockets, but it could provide early warning and shooter location data for nearby users and law enforcement. Combined with the fall sensors and heart rate monitors in a lot of smart watches, this could also provide casualty data like location and triage priority to first responders.

I was actually exploring making this into an app a year or two ago, but that requires users to install it and trust an app developer not to collect microphone data. It would only be as effective as adoption. Having the feature offered natively in the device ui like the earthquake and fall detection systems would be ideal.

We’ve come a long way with phone policies since I was in school, most students have their phones powered on through the entire school day and most schools have their students phone numbers on file. To make the data available to the school would only require students add the school ID to their device. Another option, which could work for schools and venues, is to allow the venue or school to add devices by number; the data would only be available when devices ping a possible gunshot and are in the boundaries of the venue or school location. It would also not be nearly as invasive as other features people used for contact tracing during the pandemic, as it would not allow the school or venue or authorities access to meta data upon request, it would require the device to either ping the data when it thinks it hears a gunshot or when an active shooter has been identified at the location.