Join on Chillswitch

Somebody you know uses Chillswitch to check in. If you have a code from them, this page is where to start.

What Chillswitch does

It asks one person to press a button now and then to say they are OK. If they miss one, the people they chose are told. That is the whole of it.

It is not an emergency service. Nothing here calls the police, an ambulance, or a monitoring centre, and nobody is watching a screen on your behalf.

What you have been asked to be

There are two kinds of invite, and they ask for different things.

• A safety contact. If the person who invited you misses a check-in, you are told. You are the one they are counting on.

• A group member. You are counted when the group checks that everyone is OK. You are not told when anyone else misses a check-in.

Either way you choose your own check-in settings, and you can leave at any time without asking anyone.

How to accept

• Install Chillswitch from the App Store or Google Play.

• Open the app and create an account, or sign in if you already have one.

• Paste the whole line from the message you were sent, including the long part after the code.

If the app is already installed on the phone you are reading this on, tapping the link in the message opens it straight there.

If the code does not work

Codes expire after 72 hours, whichever kind of invite you were sent. A code from a person is single use; the shared QR code a group puts on a poster or slide can be used by many people until its use limit runs out. If yours does not work, ask the person who invited you for a new one. Nobody here can look your code up, because we cannot read it.

What we can and cannot see

Names of circles and the notes people write are encrypted on the phones that use them, so they are not ours to read. We never hold your live location. There is more detail on the privacy and security pages.