Quake alerts across country were triggered by Android, not Home Front Command, Israel says

The Israel Geological Survey says an earthquake alert sent to Israeli users’ phones this morning was not the result of a Home Front Command warning system, which was not activated by the 5.2-magnitude temblor that struck near the Suez Canal at 3 a.m.

In a post on Facebook, the state body says phones were activated by an internal Android system, which noticed that several devices running the operating system shook at the same time, concluded it was caused by a quake, and sent a warning to users in the region, including in Israel, of a 5.9-magnitude rattler.

The survey says its nationwide alert system, dubbed Truah, “identified the quake in real time, but given its magnitude and the distance from the state’s borders, the system was not supposed to activate warnings to Israelis, even if it was felt in part of Israel.”

Light shaking from the tremor was felt as far as away as Lebanon, according to the European Seismic Monitoring Center. No significant damage was reported in Israel or Egypt.

According to the Geological Survey, this morning’s alert was not the first time the system was activated. Early on the morning of June 13, 2025, the Home Front Command triggered a nationwide missile alert to warn that Israel was striking Iran, causing the entire country to fumble for its phones and scramble for shelter at once. The mass movement “was accidentally identified by the Google system as a 5.1-magnitude earthquake in Israel,” the survey says.