What is Soundscape?
Soundscape is a free, open-source app that uses 3D spatial audio to help people with visual impairments build awareness of their surroundings and navigate more confidently.
Rather than giving turn-by-turn directions, Soundscape acts like a lighthouse for the ears. Through stereo headphones, users hear sounds coming from the direction of real-world places, building a richer mental map of their environment.
- Automatic callouts - As you walk, the app announces nearby intersections, shops, bus stops, parks, and other points of interest.
- Audio beacon - Set a destination and hear a continuous spatial sound pulling you toward it. The tone changes when you’re pointing the right way.
- Location awareness - Tap a button to hear what’s around you in each direction, what road you’re on, or what’s coming up ahead.
- Markers and routes - Save favourite locations and create walking routes between them. The app guides you along the route, automatically moving to the next waypoint as you arrive.
- Street preview - Explore an unfamiliar area virtually before visiting, to build confidence and familiarity.
The app carries on working in the background when the phone in a pocket or bag - no need to hold or look at a screen. It is completely free, with no ads or data collection, and the Android version can work offline using downloaded map regions.
Soundscape was originally developed on iOS by Microsoft Research and was widely used before being open sourced in 2022. The Scottish Tech Army has kept it available on iOS and also rewritten it as an open-source Android app.
Soundscape support
The email address soundscapeAndroid@scottishtecharmy.support links straight into our help desk system. Please send in any feedback you have, whether it’s a feature request or a bug report. You’ll receive an automated email in response and we’ll get pinged that there’s a new ticket to look at and we’ll try and answer it as quickly as possible.
How to use Soundscape
Soundscape in your language
We aim to support as many languages as possible and so we have started using the fantastic Weblate to help with the localization of the app. We started off supporting the same languages as supported in iOS, but we have some new strings in the Android app and so there are some missing translations in most languages. All help in adding these, or indeed adding new languages will be gratefully received. A description of how this works can be found here. When you set up a Weblate account, you choose which languages you can translate to and if the Soundscape app doesn’t currently support that language, you will have the option of adding that language on the main app page.