How-to guides
Using Earwitness, step by step
Seven guides, in the order you will need them. Each one is short on purpose — if a step needs more than a paragraph, that is a fault in the app and we would like to hear about it.
Guide 1 · about 5 minutes
Setting up your case
Do this once. Everything after it is faster because of what you enter here.
Enter the address where you are affected
Not the address making the noise — the one where you are losing sleep. That is what decides which council's rules apply.
Check what the app says about coverage
If your council is verified you will see its name, its quiet hours and its checklist. If it is not, the app says there are no verified rules for your address and asks you to pick a council. Take that at face value: it is not hiding a better answer.
Say what kind of noise it is
Neighbour or construction, and the sort — music and bass, impact and banging, machinery, voices, animals. This sets the diary fields and the checklist.
Place the phone and leave it there
Choose the room where the noise disturbs you, a metre or so from the wall or window it comes through, off soft furnishings, and the same place every night. Consistency matters more than the perfect spot, because the comparison between nights is what a reader looks at.
Grant the microphone permission when asked
The app asks before it opens any audio. If you refuse, no session starts at all — rather than running silently and leaving you with a night of nothing that looks like a quiet night.
Screens from the current design build. Detail changes between releases.
Before you start, read Recording and the law for where you are. If recording is restricted in your state, keep the diary without audio clips — it still works.
Guide 2 · one night
Recording your first night
Start a session before you go to bed
Not when the noise starts — before. A session that was already running when the thumping began shows the quiet beforehand, and that contrast is the most persuasive thing in the whole record.
Plug the phone in
Measuring all night is real work for a battery. Charge it.
Check the lock screen
A running session shows on the lock screen. If it is not there, the session is not running — do not assume it is.
Mark an event when it wakes you
One tap. You can write the detail in the morning; the tap is what fixes the time.
In the morning, finish the entries
The app shows the night's events and asks for the effect on you. Ten minutes with a coffee. This is the part only you can supply, and it is the part officers read first.
Guide 3 · the part that decides your case
Writing diary entries that work
An officer deciding whether to act is looking for a specific effect on a specific person at a specific time. Write for that reader.
Say what it did to you
"Woke at 02:10, could not get back to sleep, took a sick day" is evidence of a disturbance. "Unbelievably loud again" is a feeling. Both are true; only one is useful.
Be specific about the sound
"Bass through the party wall, windows rattling" beats "music". The kind of noise decides which rules apply and whether low-frequency thresholds come into it.
Keep your opinion of the neighbour out of it
A diary that reads like a grievance invites the reply that this is a personality clash. Flat, factual entries are harder to dismiss.
Log the quiet nights
Eleven bad nights out of fourteen is a pattern. Eleven bad nights and silence about the rest looks like selective record-keeping.
Record what you did about it
Knocked on the door, emailed the agent, rang the after-hours line and got a reference number. Councils want to see you tried first, and the app has a place for each.
Do not backdate
Late entries are fine and are marked as entered later. Dressing one up as a live capture is the one thing that could discredit everything else in the pack.
Guide 4
Making your readings more credible
In rising order of effort. Each step moves readings up a grade, and the grade is printed next to every figure in the pack.
| Grade | What it takes | How a reader should treat it |
|---|---|---|
| Diary only | You described the event; no level captured. | Evidence of a disturbance, not of a level. Still counts. |
| Indicative | Your phone, consistently placed. | Shows pattern and relative loudness. Never compare with a statutory limit. |
| Cross-checked | A second device in the household recording the same event. | Two independent captures agreeing. The cheapest real upgrade available to you. |
| Calibrated mic | A supported wired microphone with its calibration on record. | Materially better than a bare phone. Still not a certified level. |
| Class 1 instrument | Figures imported from a hired sound level meter or a consultant. | A defensible measurement, with the instrument's details recorded. |
Bluetooth microphones are not supported at any grade. A wireless audio path changes the signal in ways that cannot be accounted for, so the app refuses them rather than quietly accepting them as indicative.
Guide 5 · for a serious case
Importing a hired meter's readings
If your case may be contested, hire a sound level meter for a few nights or engage a consultant, and put their figures into the same record as your diary.
Record the instrument's details
Make, model, class, serial number, and when it was last calibrated. Without those, a reader cannot weigh the figure and the app will not grant it the instrument grade.
Import the readings
Bring in the meter's log and align it to the same nights as your diary.
Leave them at their own grade
The meter's figures stay separate from your phone's. The app will not merge them into one number, because an averaged figure across grades collapses the moment anyone asks how it was worked out.
Let the diary do what the meter cannot
A meter was there for three nights. Your diary covers six weeks. Together they show both the level and the pattern, which is the strongest combination available to a resident.
Guide 6 · about 10 minutes
Building and sending the pack
Work through the checklist
Where your council is verified, this is its own list. Anything missing is shown as missing rather than guessed at.
Add your correspondence
Letters, emails, reference numbers, photographs. Attachments are sealed by their contents, so they cannot be swapped later without the pack showing it.
Read and sign the declaration
A plain statement that the diary is your own account and the entries were made at the times shown. Read it properly — it is what makes the pack a statement rather than a printout.
Build the pack
Out comes a PDF and a Word version: cover, pattern of disturbance, measurements with their grades, the full diary, your declaration, and the verification code. Rebuild it as often as you like as the case goes on.
Send it to the right person
Council environmental health, your landlord or agent, strata or building manager, or your solicitor. Keep the reference number they give you and add it to the case.
Guide 7 · for whoever receives a pack
Verifying a pack
Written for council officers, landlords, strata managers and solicitors. You do not need an account and there is nothing to buy.
Find the verification code
It is printed on the cover and repeated in the footer of every page.
Enter it on the verification page
It tells you whether the sealed record matches the pack you are holding, and when it was sealed, by an independent timestamp rather than by the resident's phone clock.
Read the result precisely
Verified means the record is unaltered since it was sealed — not that the contents are true. Altered means a sealed item's contents have been replaced. Missing file means an attachment is no longer present, which is not tampering. Those three are deliberately different answers.
Treat the levels as graded
Each figure carries its grade. Anything marked indicative is an uncalibrated phone reading and is not a basis for a statutory comparison.
Sealing proves a record has not changed since it was sealed. It does not vouch for the truth of what a resident wrote, and a record sealed by an earlier version of the app may seal less than the current one does — the pack states which version sealed it.
When something goes wrong
The session stopped overnight
The diary records the interruption rather than showing quiet time. Check the phone was charging and that battery saving is not shutting the app down, then carry on — one interrupted night does not spoil the record.
My address isn't covered
Pick your council by hand and keep going. You lose the verified checklist and quiet hours, nothing else. Tell us the council and we will say where it sits in the queue.
The readings look too low
Usually placement: soft furnishings, a closed door, or the phone face-down. Keep the position consistent and compare nights with each other rather than against a number you read somewhere.
Verification says a file is missing
You or your phone deleted an attachment. Re-add it if you still have it; otherwise the pack notes the gap honestly. It is not reported as tampering.
The microphone prompt never appeared
Permission was refused or revoked in your phone's settings. The app refuses to start a session without it rather than record silence. Turn it on in settings and start again.
Something else
Write to [email protected] with your case reference. Do not send us your whole pack unless we ask — it is your evidence.