OWL crime & safety alerts 9+
Alerts from your local police
Direct Path Solutions
Designed for iPad
-
- Free
Screenshots
Description
Stay ahead of crime in your neighbourhood with OWL. Used by hundreds of police and council officers in London to send exclusive crime alerts, advice and updates directly to your iPhone or iPad. Download OWL now and start receiving these exclusive local alerts for FREE - no registration or login required.
Participating London boroughs include: Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames and Wandsworth.
(Additional boroughs are supported via email alerts only if you register at https://www.owl.co.uk for free. These boroughs include Barking & Dagenham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.)
This app alerts you to incidents near to where you live or at your current location. Choose the postcode zones you're interested in and receive notifications the moment the police or council send a new alert to that area.
If you get too many notifications you can switch them off and just read the latest alerts within the app, or if you don't get enough you can switch on notifications for all alerts in your borough.
OWL is supported by the Metropolitan Police Service and the Borough Councils previously mentioned. For 18 years, OWL has helped protect residents and businesses from crimes and scams, and now our app expands the accessibility of official police alerts with location-aware notifications.
Other features of the OWL app:
- Super-easy to use. No registration and no login necessary.
- Translate an alert into any language (if your main language isn't English).
- Discover who your local police officers are, where your nearest police station is, and what the priorities are for your area.
- Report a crime online or get in touch with the police in other ways.
- Share alerts on social media.
- Reply to senders of alerts.
- Directory of useful services for reporting quality of life issues, help for victims of crime and domestic abuse.
- Join your local Neighbourhood Watch scheme.
IMPORTANT: After installing and opening the app, please allow it to ALWAYS use your location and to send you push notifications. Your location is used anonymously so you can receive local alerts. We do not collect any personal information and OWL, the police and councils do not store or have access to your location.
What’s New
Version 1.0.12
○ When viewing alerts, the next/prev buttons are organised more logically.
○ Notification icon will appear on main screen if there's a general notice.
○ Updated the 'About OWL' section
○ Minor tweaks and fixes
Ratings and Reviews
OWL app fan
An excellent app, always informative, with frequent messages from the Met. It really does make you feel there is a community when the police are part of the comms and updating respective wards of both what’s happening where we are and surrounding areas.
This is one app I’m happy to allow updates to ping my way.
Disappointing
Not as useful as hoped as covers areas which are not of interest, by default, following ward boundary changes. I was told the App would resolve this issue as you can see other areas but it’s not that simple as I’m still getting irrelevant messages and rarely see any that affect my local area in spite of including them in my settings.
A lot of people are losing out on useful information as only have email messages dictated by address which means in N8 I hear more about Tottenham than Muswell Hill which is where I shop and socialise. Having to use an App, which is not very good, is no compensation for the very useful emails received daily from Muswell Hill SNT.
UI Needs work
App user interface needs work. For example the “Previous” and “Next” labels? (They are not really icons/buttons) are the wrong way around! Tap ‘Next’ to go to the one next, newer, item and instead it goes back to the older item.
Also notifications open in a browser and not the app. Meaning that once open/read they remain unread in the app.
It’s these little things are being down this app!
No issue with the context, just usage and navigation is poor.
Developer Response ,
Thank you for your feedback which has been very useful. We're pleased to say that the latest release (1.0.12) has improved the Next and Previous buttons that you mentioned so that it's more logical now.
App Privacy
The developer, Direct Path Solutions, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
- User Content
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Location
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- Direct Path Solutions Ltd
- Size
- 34.5 MB
- Category
- News
- Compatibility
-
- iPhone
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 12.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- Mac
- Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- Languages
-
English
- Age Rating
- 9+ Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
- Location
- This app may use your location even when it isn’t open, which can decrease battery life.
- Copyright
- © Direct Path Solutions
- Price
- Free