No, and it cannot. Sound is processed in memory to calculate a level, and the sound itself is discarded immediately. NoiseMark stores numbers, not recordings. This is why the app never uses the word "recording" anywhere — it would imply we keep something we do not. If you dictate a note, the speech is transcribed on your device and that audio is discarded too; only the text is kept.
No. The live meter is a rolling thirty seconds held in memory only. Nothing is written to your phone until you deliberately act. Start a Log and it keeps the period from that instant onward. Tap Mark and it keeps that moment. Do neither, close the app, and there is no history — nothing was saved.
A Log keeps a period; a Mark keeps a moment. Think of a stopwatch: Start and Stop make an interval, and Lap marks something inside it. Use a Log when the question is "how loud was it here between these times". Use a Mark when the question is "what happened at that moment". A Mark taken on its own also keeps up to thirty seconds either side, so the moment has context instead of being a single orphaned number.
You do not need a separate sound level meter. NoiseMark ships with a validated baseline for supported iPhones, so it reads in dBA from the moment you open it. Every measurement records the offset that produced it, so a figure is always attributable to the device and conditions behind it.
If you do own a reference meter, you can set your own offset for your particular phone and NoiseMark will use that instead. That is an option for people who want it, not a step you have to complete first.
It remains an indicative phone measurement. It is not certified, and it is not a substitute for calibrated instrumentation where regulations require it.
That is for the recipient to decide, and it depends entirely on your jurisdiction and context. What we will not do is claim it for you. NoiseMark is not certified, is not a Class 1 or Class 2 instrument, and is not a substitute for calibrated equipment where regulations require it. What it gives you is an honest, attributable record: every reading tied to a device, an input route, a calibration offset and an observed timeline, with any interruption stated rather than hidden.
They measure two different things. The Log duration is wall-clock time from start to stop. The measured duration counts only the seconds actually measured. If a phone call interrupted you, or the app was sent to the background, those seconds were not measured and they are excluded from every statistic. Where the difference matters, the app and the report say so in plain words.
Location is optional and never blocks anything. When you allow it, Logs and Marks are geotagged automatically with no extra tap, and the accuracy of the fix is recorded and shown, so a coordinate is never presented as more certain than it is. Deny it and your records are still complete, simply marked as having no location. Your coordinates stay on your device with one exception: if you generate a report containing located Marks, the coordinates are sent to Apple to fetch the map image for the page. No server of ours ever receives a location, and we do not look up street addresses.
No. Version 1 measures in the foreground only. If you background the app, the Log ends and the record shows exactly where and why it ended, rather than leaving a silent gap. To leave a phone measuring unattended, keep NoiseMark on screen — it holds the screen awake for you. Background measurement is something we are considering for a later release.
No. You pay once and own the tool, including reports and exports. There is no subscription, no trial, no quota and no feature that expires. We think you should be charged repeatedly for services, not for capabilities you have already bought.
Export a backup archive and restore it on the new device. The archive is a single portable file of measurements, photographs and notes in a documented open format, and restoring merges rather than overwrites. One caution: the archive is not encrypted. It carries checksums so you can tell if it has been altered, but that protects integrity, not confidentiality — so store it somewhere you consider secure. We chose not to encrypt it because a forgotten password would mean permanently losing your own evidence.
NoiseMark is a documentation tool rather than an acoustics laboratory. Each of those features adds a decision the user has to make before they can capture what is in front of them, which works against opening the app and immediately measuring. If you need frequency analysis or formal dose measurement, a dedicated tool will serve you better.
An instantaneous reading cannot support a safety verdict. Whether a level is harmful depends on how long you are exposed to it, and version 1 deliberately does not do dose measurement. A number turning red would tell you "this is dangerous", which we cannot honestly claim. In NoiseMark red means something different and useful: the reading is not what it appears to be — the input is over range, the measurement was interrupted, or an external microphone is connected.
No. The live meter and NoiseMark Pro work without an account. You need one only to subscribe to NoiseMark Cloud, which synchronises and backs up your records so that a lost or replaced phone does not cost you years of evidence. You can sign in with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and password.
If you do create an account, we use it for nothing else. There is no marketing, no advertising and no profiling. You can delete your data, or your whole account, from Settings at any time.
iPhone running iOS 16 or later. There is no Android or iPad version at present.