Porchlight is a check-in app. You tap one button a day to let the people who care about you know you are okay. If you do not, it tells them.
What happens if I miss a check-in?
Porchlight reminds you, more than once, and then with an alert that ignores silent mode. Only after that does it tell the emergency contacts you chose. You can see the whole sequence, minute by minute, under My plan.
Does it work if my phone is dead?
The reminders are scheduled on your phone in advance, so they arrive with no internet connection at all. Telling your contacts is different: if they also have Porchlight, their phone keeps its own watch on your check-ins and raises the alarm by itself, which still works when your phone is off, flat or out of signal. If they do not have the app, Porchlight cannot reach them while your phone is off.
Can Porchlight call 911?
No. No iPhone app can. Apple does not allow an app to dial emergency services without a person pressing the button, and Porchlight does not claim otherwise. What it does is put the right information in front of a person who can act: the number to call, the words to say, and your address and any notes you chose to share, with nothing left to look up.
What does it cost?
Porchlight is a one off purchase that includes the first month. After that it is 1.99 a month to keep watching. If your subscription lapses, Porchlight keeps watching for a further seven days and tells you clearly before anything stops. A check-in that has already started always runs to the end, whatever happens with billing.
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Last updated: October 2026
Porchlight has no server. There is no account to create, and no database of users anywhere. Everything you enter stays on your phone, and the only copy that leaves it goes through your own iCloud account to the emergency contacts you personally chose.
What Porchlight stores on your phone: your check-in times, your check-in history, the emergency contacts you added, and whatever emergency details you chose to fill in. Those details can include your name, date of birth, phone number, home address and apartment number, access instructions, and any medical, medication, allergy or accessibility notes you decide to add. All of it is optional except a name and address, and those are only needed if you turn on welfare checks.
What is shared, and with whom: only with the emergency contacts you added and who confirmed. Sharing is broken into separate switches in Settings, under Privacy, so you decide independently whether your contacts can see your address, your medical notes, and your last known location. Your contacts see your details only when you have missed a check-in and cannot be reached. Nothing is shared with anyone else, ever.
Location: optional, and off unless you turn it on. When it is on, Porchlight records a position at the moment you check in. If you also switch on "Keep my location up to date", and allow location "Always" in iOS Settings, your phone notes its position a few times a day when you have moved a good distance, so that if you miss a check-in your contacts see where your phone last was and not where you were the day before. When a check-in is overdue and the app runs, it may also take one fresh position. Positions stay on your phone, only your most recent one is kept, and it is sent to your contacts only while a check-in is overdue and only if you have allowed sharing your last location. There is no map of where you have been and no location history. The app never presents an old position as your current one: anything older than a few minutes is labelled as a last known location with the time it was recorded. You can turn either setting off at any time in Settings.
Apple Watch and Siri: the Apple Watch app can show your check-in and let you check in from your wrist, including when your iPhone is not nearby. It uses the same iCloud account and sends nothing anywhere else. A check-in you make with Siri, a shortcut or the Action button is recorded exactly as one made by tapping the button.
Notifications: optional. They are how Porchlight reminds you to check in, and how it alerts you if somebody you watch goes quiet. If you decline them, everything else still works. You can change this at any time in iOS Settings.
What we collect: nothing. Porchlight contains no analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind, and no third-party SDKs that phone home. We do not have a server, so there is no place for your data to be collected to. We do not sell anything about you, because we do not have anything about you.
How your data syncs: through Apple's CloudKit, using your own iCloud account. Apple's handling of that data is covered by Apple's privacy policy. We cannot read it.
Deleting your data: Settings, then Delete everything. That removes your plan, your contacts, your details and your history from the phone and from iCloud, including from the copies your contacts can see. There is no copy kept and no tombstone record.
Children: Porchlight is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes: if this policy changes in a way that affects what is shared or with whom, the app will say so before the change takes effect.