Critical Alerts - I’m confused

[Plantmom1]

Hello. I’m a little baffled at how critical alerts work (or don’t, as the case may be), and I really hope I’m wrong!

I bought a five-camera system and smart hub assuming I could use these to alert me with a notification at night if someone comes near my door or onto my property. I had seen that Arlo allowed Critical Alerts on iOS devices, so I thought that’s what it would do. I was surprised to learn that this is not how it functions. Motion detection alerts are apparently NOT included in critical alerts. Instead, it’s just for detecting water leaks, notifying you of an emergency response, or if “panic” mode has been triggered by someone in your home. I’m pretty baffled at that last one, because aren’t you already going to be awake if you triggered the panic button? So why on earth would you need a critical alert for that? I think it’s pretty safe to say most people want to be woken up if motion is detected. Yes, we can leave our phones in normal mode and not put them in DnD or silent mode, but let’s be real—it’s just not possible to do that with smart phones if you intend to get any sleep. Am I misunderstanding how these work? Is there ANY way to get a sound notification when my camera detects movement at night when my phone is in DnD mode (on an iOS). If not, is this a failing on Arlo’s part, or is it a limitation of Apple and rules they place on Critical Alerts? I’d love to hear what others think about this, and if there’s any work around. Otherwise, I think I’m returning this rather expensive system and trying something else. 

[StephenB]

Some have set up Siri to announce Arlo alerts as a workaround.  So you could try that.

[Wahlund91]

I agree, it is really bad that there seem to be no support to have critical alerts for motion alerts. I just bought pro 4 system and is quite dissapointed about this, as well as that there is no privacy masking, i.e. Ability to blacken out certain parts of the video capture.