Sound Meter

Measure the noise around you

Sound Meter from rootApps turns your Android phone into a basic sound-level meter. It suits anyone who wants a quick indication of how loud a room or nearby sound is, rather than a certified reading from dedicated measuring equipment. The app reports sound in decibels and can show a live gauge, a graph, elapsed measuring time, and minimum, average and maximum values.

What the readings can tell you

The display also gives a noise reference to help put a reading in context. You can calibrate the measurement for your particular device, which may help adjust its results. These tools are useful for comparing noise levels or keeping an informal record, but calibration does not make a phone microphone equivalent to a professional sound meter.

Your phone is part of the measurement

To measure sound, the app needs to use your phone’s microphone. That means the quality and limits of the microphone affect the results. Many Android microphones are designed to capture speech, and some devices may cap or under-read very loud sounds, particularly above roughly 90 dB. Treat the figures as an indication, not proof of a safe or precise noise level. For accurate readings, use a dedicated sound-level meter.

Popularity and practical limits

Sound Meter has a 4.46-star rating from about 186,700 reviews and more than 10 million installs. Those figures suggest it is widely used, but they do not change the central trade-off: you get a convenient on-phone estimate, while the measurement depends on hardware that was not necessarily built for acoustic testing. The supplied details do not establish whether the app contains advertising or paid features, so check its Google Play listing for those terms before choosing it.