TL;DR
- Google Play Services now shows early signs of support for Personal Safety Crisis Alerts.
- It’s possible that Google could use this shift to bring Crisis Alerts to more phones than before.
Google’s Personal Safety app sure carries a lot of weight, responsible not just for detecting car crashes, but also managing our emergency contact info, giving us some piece of mind with safety checks, or even triggering an emergency SOS. But now we’re wondering if Google might be planning to split some of that functionality up, and in doing so make it available to a much larger group of Android users.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
The Personal Safety app may feel like a Pixel exclusive a lot of the time, but as we were reminded just last month, a few other manufactures have also given their phones access. That’s still just a fraction of the Android user base, and for features that are so potentially life-saving it might make sense to try and make them available to as many users as possible. What better way to do that than through Google Play Services?
Looking through Play’s new 24.31.33 build, we’re discovering a whole mess of text strings that sure appear to reference Personal Safety’s Crisis Alerts:
Code
Test Public Alert
Test SOS Alert
Crisis Alerts Details Preference Key
Crisis Alert Alert
Crisis Alert Updates
Crisis Alert Notification
%1$s, %2$s
Crisis Alerts
Get notified about natural disasters or public emergencies affecting your area
Keep in mind: your phone may not notify you about all public emergencies.
Android uses your device’s approximate location to find info about crises affecting your area even when the app is closed or not in use.
Crisis Alerts Settings Illustration Key
Crisis Alerts Main Switch Key
Crisis Alerts Not Available Country Key
Get local information and latest updates
Crisis Alerts isn’t available: %1$s
Location switch is off
Turn on Location
not supported in this region
Supported countries
you’re offline
Go to Settings
Missing notifications permission
Grant permission While we can definitely see this change as Google preparing to shift how its software handles Crisis Alerts, for the time being, at least, the idea of access spreading to more devices is more hopeful than anything. Having Play Services manage these notifications absolutely feels like the way to quickly implement Crisis Alerts on as much hardware as possible — but it’s also far from a guarantee that this is the direction Google’s pursuing.
Ultimately, this could just be an internal reorganization that has no outward impact on access to Crisis Alerts. We’ll remain diligent looking for evidence supporting either of these outcomes.