Frequently Asked Questions

EEW alerts are audible “Drop, Cover and Hold On” alerts sent during an earthquake. These alerts are meant for you to take protective measures.

EEW alerts are sent for earthquakes at or above magnitude 4.5 to regions of strong, moderate and light shaking.

Please see here for how EEW works.

During the first app launch, the app will prompt you to give notification permissions and on iOS, to allow critical alerts as well. Please give those permissions.

Following that, the app will prompt you to enter a Homebase address. Please enter your home address.

Rest assured, for security and privacy reasons, your Homebase address is not transmitted to or stored in our servers. It only remains on your device.

You may verify your notification permissions under:

You may verify your Homebase address under:

EEW alerts are sent several seconds after an earthquake is detected. Most users typically get the alert a few seconds before shaking.

If you are far from the earthquake, you might receive 30 or more seconds of warning.

If you are very close to the earthquake, you might receive the alert when shaking has already begun. In that case, the alert serves as a confirmation that what you feel is indeed an earthquake and you should protect yourself if not already.

The size of the EEW alert region depends primarily on the magnitude of the earthquake and increases substantially for higher magnitude earthquakes.

For instance, a M4.5 earthquake’s shaking region spans a 30mi radius whereas a M6.0 earthquake’s shaking region spans a 200mi radius.

The three states of CA, OR and WA represent the areas where the USGS (and its partners such as the Berkeley Seismology Laboratory) has installed a dense network of seismic sensors. These sensors are capable of detecting and reporting earthquakes in real-time, which is essential for issuing EEW alerts.

EEW alerts are only available in these states because the infrastructure required to provide timely and accurate alerts is not yet available in other regions.

To change your Homebase, please delete your current Homebase by clicking EDIT -> Trash icon on the Homebase screen. You may enter your new Homebase after that.

The capability to add multiple Homebases will be added in the next major app release. Please stay tuned.

However, if you give location permission for the app, it will *also* (ie, in addition to your Homebase) use your last known good location to send you alerts.

You may verify your location permission under:

Rest assured, your location data is highly coarse and cannot be used to identify your exact location. It not used for any other purpose nor shared with third parties as listed in our Privacy Policy.

Yes, you will be alerted for any M4.5+earthquake that affects your Homebase regardless of where you are at that moment.

This behavior ensures that you receive an alert even if you are away from your area or out of state, so you may immediately alert those who might be present at your Homebase.

On iOS, the Critical Alert permission that you gave during the initial setup will bypass the Focus / Do Not Disturb setting.

On Android, you will have to add it manually under:

And add MyShake to the allowed apps list.

The only EEW alert setting that is user-configurable is the Homebase.

In the interest of safety, the app does not allow you to configure any other EEW alert settings, such as the minimum earthquake magnitude, alerting radius or the alerting volume.

No. The alert sounds the same regardless of how much shaking (strong, moderate or light) you are expected to feel.

Earthquake early warnings are sent based on the earliest seismic signals from only a few sensors. They are designed for speed at the expense of accuracy. It is possible that the earthquake is smaller or larger than the initial estimates, or the fault could rupture a long way from the epicenter.

Therefore, it is possible that you may experience stronger or weaker shaking than originally anticipated in your region. This is why we send the same alert to all regions, regardless of expected shaking intensity.

Earthquake notifications (not alerts) are normal notifications of earthquakes of interest. These are sent minutes after an earthquake and are for informational purposes. They are NOT EEW alerts.

The app, by default, is configured to send you these notifications for:

• Global: M6.5+ earthquakes anywhere in the world
• Homebase: M3.0+ earthquakes within 50 miles of your Homebase

You may change these settings or add your own custom earthquake notifications under:

The next major app release will support a larger number of custom notifications and an ability to choose any geographic region (country,city etc) in the world. Please stay tuned.

The earthquake detection feature of the app is the citizen science project (on Android phones only), where the sensor/accelerometer data on your phone is recorded and sent to the Berkeley Seismology Lab for earthquake research.

Please check here for more information.

You may disable this feature by swiping off the notification from your notification tray, or permanently, by going to the app settings and turn on the battery saving mode, ie, Settings -> Battery saving mode -> ON

The app stores some information that might help debug certain issues.

You may send this info by going to:

Tap on "ADD TO CLIPBOARD" button, and paste the clipboard contents into an email (you might have to long-press on your email body in order for the 'Paste' menu option to appear).

The app supports the six most populous languages in California: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog (Filipino).

The app picks up the system language setting on your device.

The app is completely free to download and use. There are no in-app purchases or subscriptions.

The app is brought to you by the UC Berkeley Seismology Lab, sponsored by the California Governor's office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).

Besides EEW alerts and Earthquake notifications, the app offers the following features:

• Earthquake Preparation and Safety Information
• Earthquake Map and List views
• Earthquake details with shaking and damage reports
• Earthquake felt report submission
• Sensor data visualization
• Citizen science waveform data capture (Android only)

The app is brought to you by the UC Berkeley Seismology Lab, sponsored by the California Governor's office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).

The sensor waveform data is used for the following research areas:

Structural Health Monitoring
In this research area, the MyShake sensor data is used to determine the modal frequencies of buildings. Building modal frequencies can help chacterize the building response to earthquake ground motion. More importantly, it can be used to determine if the building's structural integrity has been compromised as a result of earthquake shaking.

Ground Motion Modelling
In this research area, the MyShake sensor data is used to quantify the ground motion due to earthquakes at various locations. This data can be used to improve the ground motion prediction equations that are used in earthquake engineering and seismic hazard analysis.

We participate in the Great ShakeOut event annually and send out a drill alert to all users in the EEW alerting regions.

In addition, we might occasionally send test alerts to our users as part of our system operations and performance tests.

We encourage our interested users to subscribe to a monthly test alert, sent on the 1st of the every month at 12 noon. You may subscribe by emailing us your app debug info.

It is always desirable to use the latest app version, since they will contain feature improvements and bug fixes.

You may find the app version under:

Scroll all the way to the bottom to see the app version on the lower-right.

To check if you are using the latest app version, please visit the App Store (iOS) or Google Play Store (Android) and search for "MyShake". If an update is available, you will see an "Update" button instead of "Open".

To keep the app automatically updated, please enable automatic updates in your device, under:

The Log page shows all alerts and notifications that the app has received.

Primarily meant for your historical perusal, this log is also helpful for debugging purposes.

Therefore, we do not allow deletion of entries in the Log page. The earthquake notifications older than 18 months will auto-delete themselves.

If device storage space is your concern, rest assured, these logs do not occupy more than a few MBs.

EEW alerts are sent for earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater, to the region that would have experienced strong, moderate or light shaking.

Please check that your Homebase is set, your notifications permissions are enabled including Critical Alerts on iOS and Focus/DoNotDisturb is permitted for MyShake on Android.

Check the My Log / Earthquake Log page on the app to see if the alert appears there. If it appears, it means the alert arrived on your phone.

If you still need help, please email us the app debug info.

The app displays earthquakes that are reported by the USGS.

There may be a delay of a few minutes before an earthquake appears on the map.

You may try the refresh button (the circle-arrow button towards the top-right of the map) to see if it helps.

Note: International earthquakes below M4.5 will take days to appear on the map as per this USGS FAQ.

This should help explain that behavior. You may change this behavior as mentioned.

If you still need help, please email us the app debug info.

Earthquake notifications (not alerts) are sent according to the notification settings under:

Please check those settings to ensure that you have at least one notification configured that matches an earthquake that has occurred. Then check the My Log / Earthquake Log page on the app to see if the notification appears there. If it appears, it means the notification arrived on your phone.

If you still believe that something is wrong, please try this. Edit your Global notification to a low magnitude of M2.5. This should cause the next M2.5+ event anywhere in the world to trigger a notification, which typically happens within a couple of hours. If you get such a notification, it indicates the system is functional (again), and you may revert to the M6.5 setting that you had before.

If you still need help, please email us the app debug info.