Set up emergency contacts who can break through silent & DND
Family is a special policy tier above Always Allow. A Family contact can fire an SOS that plays a loud alarm on your phone even when silent or Do Not Disturb is on. Use it only for genuine emergency contacts.
Make sure they’re a Trusted Contact first
Open Contacts tab → tap their card. If they’re not on the list yet, tap + Add Trusted and pick them.
Open their Contact Policy page
Tap their card. You’ll see policy chips: Always allow / Ask each time / Always deny, and a separate Family option below.
Tap Family
You’ll get a confirmation dialog: “Mark as FAMILY? [Contact] will be able to sound a loud alarm on your phone — even when silent or DND is on. Use only for genuine emergency contacts.”
Tap Make Family. Their card now shows the 🚨 emoji and a SOS-AUTHORIZED label.
Test SOS once, before you need it
Have the Family contact fire an SOS at you (their app: tap your card → Send SOS Now). On your phone you should:
- Hear the system alarm tone (loud, even on silent)
- See a full-screen RED takeover with a STOP button
- Feel a heartbeat-pattern vibration
- Get a separate auto-reply with your location sent back to them
It auto-stops after 60 seconds. Tap STOP ALARM to end it sooner.
If the test failed
No alarm at all: the SMS may not have arrived — check your inbox for an [KZL-SOS:…] tagged message. If missing, your carrier may have dropped it.
Notification but no full-screen takeover: on Android 14+ you must explicitly grant the Full-screen intent permission. Settings → Apps → Locator → Permissions → Display over apps + Full-screen intent.
Alarm too quiet: Locator plays on the system alarm stream (same one as your morning alarm). Settings → Sound → Alarm volume.
Removing Family
If you ever want to revoke the SOS privilege for a contact: open their card → tap the chip selector → pick Always allow or Ask each time instead of Family. Effective immediately. SOS attempts after that point fall back to a normal location request.
SOS abuse protection
- Family-only: Only contacts you’ve marked Family can ever fire SOS. Always-Allow contacts cannot.
- Rate limit: Max one SOS per 5 minutes per contact. Spam attempts after that are silently dropped.
- Auto-stop: 60-second cap. The alarm cannot run forever.
- One-tap revoke: If a Family contact ever abuses the feature, change their policy in 2 taps.