Calls · Texts · Notifications
Now eleven numbers you've never seen are ringing, two of them twice a day, and the texts started on Thursday. Doorman answers the door so you don't have to, and it writes down everyone who knocked.
Private pilot, invite only. Doorman runs on a handful of Android phones today, tested on T-Mobile. Nothing is for sale yet.
It never stores your messages or reads your contacts. What the Live Line and Ask Doorman send, and why, is on the privacy page.
Eleven numbers reached the door.
Not one of them made a sound.
Three were expected. Those got through.
And every one of the eleven was written down.
The other apps here make a judgement and then say nothing about it, which is why their reviews are full of people who missed something and found out days later. You get the reason for every single one — the ones that were held, and the ones that rang.
The screens in this section, and the Live Line screen further down, are unretouched captures from the Android build, cropped only to remove the phone's own status bar. The callers come from the app's test lab, which runs synthetic calls through the real decision engine — publishing a stranger's number to sell software would be a strange way to argue that we take yours seriously.
One is a permission it never asks for. The other two are how the app is built, and the privacy page says exactly what leaves the phone, and when.
To show you a held text and let you reply, it reads the words from the notification, in memory, on the phone. It never writes them down and never sends them anywhere. The log keeps who knocked and when, not what they said.
By the time a notification reaches Doorman, Android has already swapped in the contact's name if it knows one. A name means someone you know, a bare number means a stranger, and that's the whole test. It needs your address book about as much as a doorbell does.
A held text keeps its place in your notification shade. A held call still turns up in your call log. There's no code path in the app that can suppress either one, and a test checks for that on every build.
Codes come from five-digit senders and nobody has one of those saved, so a shut door holds them like anything else. Tap once and messages open to everyone for ten minutes, then it shuts itself again whether you remember to or not.
This is the part most filters get wrong. They make you choose between a quiet phone and being able to log in to anything.
Messages open to any sender. Closes on its own.
The Live Line · running in the pilot
Your carrier forwards the calls you decline or miss to a number Doorman runs. Doorman picks up, says it's Doorman, and asks who's calling and why. What they say is written out and on your phone while they hold.
Every call leaves a receipt: put through, message, blocked, timed out or hung up. To change how the line behaves, ask Doorman in plain words — “only let approved callers ring” — and nothing changes until you confirm.
Forwarding is a setting with your carrier. We have tested it on T-Mobile; other carriers are unproven. What the line hears and keeps is on the privacy page.
One switch. People in your contacts still get through, alarms always do, and everything else waits its turn.
Expecting the roofer? Add the number before they ring. Every other app here makes you wait to be bothered first and block them afterwards.
The door writes things down instead of interrupting. A short note twice a day says what knocked, and you can switch that off. If you use the Live Line, it asks you while a caller is holding.
Shows the Live Line's mode — Silent, Approved, Urgent or Closed — and changes it with a tap.
A Wear OS companion to your phone: the door, recent knocks, the mode, and Ask Doorman from your wrist. It works with the phone, not without it.
Nearly all of them were about billing. So the part that costs us nothing to run isn't a subscription. Nothing is for sale yet; this is how it will work at launch.
Calls to your own number, held and shown with the reason. Free, and staying that way.
Texts, app notifications and the log. You'll pay once and that's the end of it. Fourteen days free first, and nothing happens on its own when they run out.
Private pilot, invite only. Founding members keep the price they join at. It will be a subscription, because we rent a real phone number for you every month, and you'll see the price before anyone can pay it.
Android only for now. No ads, no third-party analytics or crash reporting, and nothing sold.
The pilot
Doorman runs on a handful of Android phones today, and we add people by hand. If you'd like to be one of them, write to us. There is no list and no newsletter; a person reads it and replies.
We keep your address only to reply, and it goes nowhere else — what that means.
Write to
hello@mydoorman.app
Tell us your phone and your carrier. We've tested the Live Line on T-Mobile; other carriers are unproven, and we'd still like to hear from you.
Email us to join the pilot
