Folks: Call Your Family

Folks is an app blocker with a heart.

Choose the people you keep meaning to call. Say how often. On shield night, if you owe someone a call, the apps that steal your evenings stay locked until you have actually called them.

Not a reminder. A promise you keep.

WHY A LOCK AND NOT A NOTIFICATION

You have had the reminder. You swiped it away. Folks does not nag, does not count your pickups, and does not send you something every day. It stays completely quiet while you are keeping up, and on the week you let someone slip, it holds your apps until you have called. Keep up and you can own this app for years and never once see a locked screen.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Add someone. Your mum, your grandad, your sister overseas. Say how often you want to talk.
2. Folks counts the days. Nothing happens while you are on track.
3. If a day goes by without the call, they are overdue.
4. On shield night, the apps you chose lock. Your person's face comes up instead: call them first.
5. Call from inside Folks and your apps open again.

WHAT YOU KEEP

After every call, Folks asks one question: what did they tell you? Your answer becomes a line in a quiet journal that grows into the thing you would never get back. Record their voice while they are telling you a story. Years of small notes about one person is not a feature. It is the reason to keep the app.

THEIR DAYS, WEEKS AHEAD (FOLKS PLUS)

Birthdays, Christmas, Mother's Day, anniversaries, and any date you add yourself, in one gift calendar. Jot gift ideas between calls, tick off what you got, and share the rest with the family so nobody buys the same thing twice. Reminders arrive four weeks out, not the night before.

INVITE THE PEOPLE YOU CALL

Send someone a code. They install Folks, type it in, and their circle starts with you already in it: your name, your number, your birthday. Nobody's mum is filling in a form. One card crosses, once, and then both phones go back to being private. No shared circle, no shared streaks, nobody watching whether you called.

YOUR YEAR WITH THEM

Forty one calls with Mum. Nine hours of talking. Sixty three things written down. A postcard for the family chat, made from a year you actually spent.

THE PORCH (FOLKS PLUS)

A slow, quiet wall of small stories from other people calling their people. No followers, no profiles, no algorithm, and it never sends you a notification.

BUILT FOR FAMILY WHO ARE FAR AWAY

Every person carries their own time zone, so you know it is half past seven for Nana before you ring. WhatsApp, Messenger and FaceTime are all first class, because family overseas does not live on a phone number.

YOURS, AND ONLY YOURS

No account. No tracking. No analytics. Your circle, your calls and your notes stay on your phone and sync through your own iCloud, where we cannot read them. Two things leave, both because you send them: a story you post to the Porch, and an invitation you hand to someone.

FOLKS PLUS

Free gives you one person to keep up with, the journal you build together, their voice, your year with them as a postcard worth sending, and invitations for the people you call. That app is yours for good, and it is not a trial.

Folks Plus adds the part that is hard to build. Shield night, so the lock actually happens. Nine more seats in your circle. The gift calendar with its ideas and its shareable wishlist. And the Porch.

NZ$9.99 a month or NZ$59.99 a year, with a free week so you can watch one shield night work before you decide. Subscriptions renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, and you can manage or cancel any time in Settings.

Made by one person in Wellington, New Zealand.

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