These iPhone apps fail at a central point

In an emergency, every minute and every warning counts. Warning apps such as Nina, Biwapp, Katwarn or warning weather should help. They should provide users with reliable information in the event of a disaster. But they don’t, at least not on the iPhone when it matters, as Stiftung Warentest has now discovered.

Stiftung Warentest examined the disaster warning apps that were recently in focus and discovered an obvious weak point for users of an iPhone. Nina, Biwapp, Katwarn and warning weather were examined – all fail mercilessly on one point (Source: Stiftung Warentest).

Stiftung Warentest: disaster warning apps knocked out by iPhone function

Activate it on the iPhone the popular “do not disturb” function, then the apps mentioned do not issue a warning and simply remain silent in an emergency. So if you use the function overnight, for example, you are exposed to danger in the event of an emergency because an important alarm cannot be reported. But shouldn’t high-level warning messages get through to the user better, regardless of whether “Do not disturb” is active?

In principle, this is possible, but app developers at Apple must use the Also apply for the “Critical Alerts” function. However, all of the apps we tested explicitly failed to do this – quite an absurdity.

Of course, Stiftung Warentest asked those responsible for one opinion, the answers varied. While Nina and Biwapp now want to deliver the function in the next update, the necessity of the feature is still checked in warning weather. At Katwarn, however, the integration of “Critical Alerts” is generally not planned.

How does such a warning app work in the Video explained using the example of Nina:

Android users do not have the problem, by the way, because with Google’s smartphone system you can individually specify for each app whether messages are also put through for “Do not disturb” – exceptions for the disaster warning apps are therefore expressly possible.

What can you do now?

And what do owners of an iPhone do now? The Stiftung Warentest advises: If you don’t want to do without warning messages, you should Better not activate “Do not disturb” and set the iPhone to “loud”. If you don’t want to be disturbed by other messages in your sleep, you should deactivate the notifications for these apps individually.

If you ask us, not exactly comfortable and almost impossible in practice with the multitude of apps. So one can only hope that at least Nina and Biwapp keep their promise and come up with the respective update as soon as possible.