Noise is the thing people notice last and complain about first.
Restaurant guides describe the food, the price and the neighbourhood. None of them tell you how loud the room gets. Quietful collects readings from people in the room and publishes them.
Why we built it
Dining rooms got louder over the last two decades, and the reasons are structural. Hard floors, exposed ceilings and open kitchens read as modern and are cheap to clean. They also reflect sound instead of absorbing it. Add music set at the level the room was designed for when empty, and a conversation between four people becomes work.
For most people that is an annoyance. For someone with hearing loss, misophonia, hyperacusis, an auditory processing difference, or a hearing aid that amplifies everything equally, it is the reason to stay home. The information that would let them choose confidently already exists; it is just held in the heads of everyone who has been to the venue.
Quietful collects it. A short measurement on a phone, between fifteen and sixty seconds, submitted by someone sitting where you would sit, becomes an average, a range and a picture of which hours are worst. Enough of those and a city has a map.
What we hold to
A range, not a verdict
A venue is not simply loud. It is 52 dBA at three in the afternoon and 74 dBA at seven. We publish both, plus a separate hour-by-hour average, because that is what a decision needs.
Numbers carry their source
Every figure in the app is backed by a reading count, so you can see how much data it rests on. A bare number with no unit and no count is a bug, not a design choice.
Measurement, not surveillance
The microphone runs only while you are taking a reading, and only the loudness is measured. No audio is recorded, stored or sent anywhere. Your list of sounds to avoid is saved on your phone and sent with each search to filter results; Quietful doesn’t store it.
Venues are not the adversary
Most loud rooms are loud by accident. A venue’s owner sees the same readings customers see.
Calm by default
The contribution goal resets monthly. There are no daily streaks, and Quietful has permanent contribution milestones. There are no notifications asking where you have been. The monthly goal is five readings.
What it costs
Quietful is free, with no premium tier, because a map of quiet places is only useful if everyone can see all of it.
A venue cannot pay to change, hide or reorder a reading, or to look quieter.