Amazon's Ring is launching its Neighbours community app in the UK on 21 October, aiming to replace informal WhatsApp or Facebook neighbourhood groups with a dedicated platform for local safety updates, community matters and lost pets. The app will be free within the existing Ring app and open to anyone, not just owners of Ring devices, arriving amid ongoing privacy concerns about the doorbell maker's surveillance capabilities in the US.

Users set an address and a radius of between 0.1 and five miles to join their local community, with posts anonymised, sorted into categories, and moderated by both AI and human reviewers under strict content guidelines. Two more contentious US features — Neighbours Verified, letting bodies such as fire services post advisories, and Community Requests, which lets police ask for footage from local Ring cameras — will not launch immediately in the UK, with police unable to see who declines to share footage. The rollout also includes a "Search Party for Dogs" tool for reporting lost pets, alongside a new encryption system called TAKE that limits access to camera footage to 24 hours unless the user grants further consent.