Spare the Air Bay Area

Spare the Air

About this app

Spare the Air Bay Area is the official air quality app for the nine counties that surround San Francisco Bay: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southwestern Solano, and southern Sonoma counties. The app provides Alert Day notifications, county by county air quality forecasts, several tools to help you personally reduce air pollution, as well as air quality podcasts.

Features
•Air Alerts – Provides Alert notifications when the Bay Area is experiencing a Spare the Air Day.
•Local Air Reports – Provides 5-day air quality forecasts for each of the nine Bay Area counties.
•Report a Smoking Vehicle – Makes 1-800-EXHAUST smoking vehicle reports even easier by allowing users to simply text in the license plates of smoking vehicles.
•Bike Route Planner – An active way to spare the air, this tool provides bike route directions and maps.
•Air Quality Podcasts – Contains health and air quality podcasts from the Air District and partners such as Breathe California.

The Spare the Air Program was established by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to educate people about air pollution and to encourage them to improve air quality by making clean air choices.

Ratings and reviews

Not user friendly, too heavy, and obnoxious about location access. My biggest gripe is no Spare the Air alert widget. Most people just want some way to quickly see if an alert has been issued for today or tomorrow. If they want to keep this bloated mess, they should offer a widget-only app as well. Sadly, last time I checked, they don't offer API access to the alert status, so I can't even build my own.

RIDICULOUS PERMISSIONS OVERREACH!!! Insanely stupid app design requires GPS, refuses to accept long/lat and/or Zip Code for location. Looks like no one has tended to this (CR)app code for YEARS...

Today is a spare the air day and this app reports no spare the air. Also, it's asks for location access 😡