Google has introduced a useful feature for the hearing impaired – and those with headphones in – that provides an alert when there’s an important sound in your household.

Sound Notifications on Android provides push notifications when there’s a sound that may be critical around you, such as a fire alarm, the doorbell, the dog barking, or a baby crying. Alongside displaying the alerts, the feature can also flash the camera light or vibrate the device.

The feature can work offline and use the phone’s microphone to recognise 10 different noises. And there’s a timeline view, so users can see a snapshot of the sounds detected over the past few hours. Sound Notifications can also work through Wear OS on Google smartwatches, providing vibrations on your wrist when your phone detects a noise.

The notifications can be turned on by enabling ‘Sound Notifications’ within the Accessibility menu in Settings. If the option isn’t there, it can be downloaded from Google Play.