The 4 Best Free Police Scanner Apps (2024)

FAQs

Can I listen to my local police scanner on my phone? ›

Download a police scanner app for your mobile device.

There are many different police scanner apps available to casual listeners, all of which will provide access to channels in your immediate vicinity and beyond. While some police scanner apps are sold for a small price (usually $3-5), many of the best ones are free.

Thanks to our fans for making 5-0 Radio the #1 most downloaded police scanner app on the market. This app is one of top 100 most downloaded iOS apps since 2009.

You're probably not hearing everything, and you're probably not hearing it in real time. The web-based scanner apps often blend multiple radio frequencies together so there is more traffic to listen to. Most public safety communications are trunked, where traffic is carried over multiple radio channels.

Adobe Scan gives you the power to not only scan a document, but add drawings, shapes, and JPEGs to your PDFs right in the app. You can even save files as JPEGs for more flexibility, share scanned PDFs with a link or email, and upload them to your favorite cloud apps — all for free.

Can scanners be modified to listen to it? By federal law monitoring private phone conversations is prohibited. No scanners made in the last 10 years have been capable of monitoring cell phones or are capable of being modified to do so.

All scanners need to be programmed or you will not be able to hear your local police department—or anything else. Programming is to scanners what gas is to cars. You're not going to get too far without the fuel it needs to operate.

Ka Band represents the most recent and widely used frequency range in police radar technology, operating between 33.4 to 36.0 GHz. This band is favored by law enforcement for its shorter wavelengths, which allow for more accurate speed measurement and reduced visibility to radar detectors.

If you'll want to take it around town, to the mall or sporting event or air show, then buy a portable. If it will almost exclusively be used on your desk or night table at home, then the base/desktop is the right choice. For mobile use if the radio will be fixed in the car then we recommend a base/mobile scanner.

Scanner Pro is the best scanning app for your iPhone and iPad. Scan agreements, receipts, IDs, books, and more using your device and turn them into high-quality PDFs, so you can safely store and share them anywhere. Experience the simplicity of on-the-go document scanning.

Reasons for municipalities switching to digital systems is because of clearer sound and a greater range of reception. Analog scanners provide voice from Analog signals.

Why do police scanners not work anymore? ›

They are still used, but a vast majority of law enforcement agencies have gone to encrypted radio systems. If their radio's are encrypted you won't hear anything unless you have a radio with encryption key loaded into it. This makes a radio scanner useless if the only goal was to monitor police radio traffic.

Scanner Radio is the #1 police scanner and alerts you of breaking news so you can listen to the action live with millions of others. Stay up to date with your local news, traffic, emergency and public safety or listen in during major national live events in real time.

Encrypted signals cannot be picked up on any scanner. Some scanner formats can pick up more than one format (See chart below). Digital scanners can pick up all formats (phase 2, phase 1, trunked & analog), trunked scanners can pick up (trunked & analog), analog scanners can only pick up analog.

A free program for Android, by RadioReference.com LLC.