Three Personal Safety Features You May Not Know Are in Alarm.com
Your Alarm.com app from SmartShield Homes can do more than control the security system at your house. There are several features designed specifically around the safety of the people using it—including when they're away from home.
Here are three worth knowing about.
1. Safety Button: Get help wherever you are
Open Safety Button in the Alarm.com app and you'll see a button you can press and hold when you're in a situation where you don't feel safe.
As long as you're holding the button, nothing happens.
When you release it, Alarm.com gives you 10 seconds to enter your PIN and cancel the event. If you don't cancel it, a trained operator receives the request along with information including your phone number and GPS location. The operator can communicate with you by text or phone and dispatch police, fire or medical assistance when necessary. If you can't respond, emergency help can be dispatched to your last known location.
Where this gets useful: walking through a parking garage at night, approaching something suspicious around your home, or any situation where something doesn't feel right but you aren't necessarily ready to call 911.
You can also create Safety Button Notes before an event—such as information about someone you're meeting or a suspicious vehicle—so an operator has additional context if you later need help.
2. Safety Check-Ins: Tell Alarm.com when you should be back
Are you a runner? Doing errands in a new area of town where you're not 100% comfortable? Let us help you with Safety Check-In.
Before leaving, open:
Safety Button → Plan Ahead → Add Check-In
Choose when you expect to be back and add a note explaining what you're doing.
At the scheduled time, Alarm.com sends you a notification with three choices:
I'm Safe | Snooze | Send Help
Tap I'm Safe, and you're done.
If you're simply running late, you can snooze the check-in. The snooze period can be set to 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes.
But here's the important part: if you don't respond at all within 10 minutes, the process escalates. Your location information is provided to a monitoring-station operator and configured emergency contacts. If the operator can't reach you, emergency services are notified.
That makes Check-Ins useful for much more than running.
A bike ride. A hike. A short boat trip. Driving somewhere alone. Meeting someone you don't know. Even working alone somewhere for a few hours.
You're essentially telling the system:
“I expect to be okay at this time. If you don't hear from me, check on me.”
That's very different from an emergency button because you don't have to be able to ask for help after something happens.
Check out this vide: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iqchttpCPec
3. My Circle: A simple way to know how family members are doing
My Circle is designed more around ongoing awareness than emergencies.
Family members who choose to participate can share several useful pieces of information through Alarm.com:
Location — See when someone leaves or returns home based on the home's location.
Activity — See daily step counts and receive an alert if no steps have been detected for 24 hours.
Phone battery — See the battery level of their phone and receive an alert when it gets low.
Feeling — A family member can use the app to indicate how they're feeling with a single tap.
None of those things alone necessarily means something is wrong.
Together, though, they can answer some very ordinary questions without constantly calling or texting someone:
Did Mom leave the house today? Is Dad up and moving around? Is their phone dead—or are they simply not answering?
That's especially useful for families who want some awareness of an older parent living independently without turning their home into something that feels like a monitoring facility.this is active deterence
With SmartShield Homes - it's free if you are on a service plan!
While many service providers charge for this feature, SmartShield offers this at no extra charge for families on a paid service plan.
These features depend on the Alarm.com service package and permissions associated with the account. Safety Button also requires an individual Alarm.com login, compatible app version, push notifications, and location services with precise location enabled.
If you're a SmartShield customer and aren't sure whether these features are available on your system, give us a call. We'll help you find them and get them configured. Or send a request on our website