What SidewalkSnitch is

NYC 311 is the front door to city services. When a car blocks a fire hydrant, when a restaurant's outdoor tables spill past their permitted boundaries, when trash is put out at 3 pm on a Tuesday in violation of DSNY setout rules — 311 is how residents officially report it. The system works, but it is slow and confusing. The web form asks you to choose from dozens of categories; pick the wrong one and your complaint gets routed to the wrong agency and closed without action. The official NYC 311 app has its own category maze.

Most people who want to file a complaint give up before they finish. The ones who persist often file in the wrong category. The city closes those complaints, and the violation continues.

SidewalkSnitch is a free Progressive Web App — no App Store download required. You open it in your mobile browser, tap the yellow card on the home screen, take a photo, and the app handles the classification step automatically.

An AI vision model (xAI's Grok-4) reads your photo against NYC's rules registry for the violation category you chose. It identifies what rule was violated, extracts the relevant details — license plate, business name, precise address — and drafts a complaint description in plain English. You review that draft, edit anything that's inaccurate, and check a box confirming that what the description says is what you personally observed. Then you submit.

The complaint goes to the correct agency: NYPD or NYC DOT for parking violations, NYC DOT for sidewalk-café violations, NYC DSNY for sanitation complaints, NYC DEP for idling complaints. You don't have to know which agency handles which type of violation — that's the part SidewalkSnitch handles.

SidewalkSnitch is for NYC residents who already use 311 and find it frustrating. It is not a surveillance tool, not a bounty platform, and not a way to anonymously report neighbors. You have to verify your identity with a real phone number and a real name. The city requires that — SidewalkSnitch just makes it easier to get there.

The app works best on iPhone Safari and Android Chrome. It installs as a home screen PWA on both platforms, so it's available offline for drafting and works without App Store permissions.

SidewalkSnitch is an independent product, built in New York City. It is not affiliated with the City of New York, not a government app, and not operated by 311. It uses NYC Open Data (publicly available datasets from the Socrata platform at opendata.cityofnewyork.us) and submits complaints through the official 311 channels, but the app itself is independently owned and operated.

It is free to use, has no advertising, and does not sell user data. The privacy posture is explained in full on the Privacy Policy page.

The current version classifies four complaint domains:

• Parking violations — fire hydrant blocking, crosswalk and bus-stop blocking, bike-lane obstruction, double-parking, and handicap-zone violations without a permit. The AI extracts the license plate and can show the vehicle's prior open violations from NYC Open Data.
• Outdoor dining violations — sidewalk cafés operating outside their permit boundaries, outside licensed hours, or with unsafe barriers. Routed to NYC DOT's sidewalk-café revocable-consent program.
• Sanitation violations — trash set out before the legal evening hours, illegal dumping, recycling non-compliance. Routed to DSNY.
• Vehicle idling — commercial vehicles idling more than 3 minutes (1 minute near schools). Routed to NYC DEP via 311.