Contact Latch App Support

My apartment building uses this instead of keys and it’s been a really bad experience. It’s a huge hassle to unlock my phone while wearing a mask and carrying groceries to unlock three different Latch devices to get into my home. I’ve dropped my phone a number of times trying to unlock doors while carrying things. I’d rather fumble with keys than a new iPhone. There’s a key card, which is a way better solution, but it doesn’t work half the time. Then of course the app doesn’t work sometimes. Having bluetooth on drains my battery extremely fast and before I got the key card I would be locked out of my home if my phone died. Asking me to memorize codes to get into my home is absurd. When I’m tired and I want to go home, I just want a key. I’m not doing extra work when I could have just had a key. If the key card was reliable this could be a really great solution and awesome for accessibility but it has major limitations as an app. If the app is meant to replace keys it needs to be a better solution than a key and it just isn’t.

Often when I try to open a door I will have to stand their waving my phone around the sensor and physically touching my phone to the sensor in order to get it to work and it can take quite a bit. It’s also super inconvenient when your hands are always full and you have to get out your phone, unlock it, open the app and then hold it up to the sensor waiting for it to unlock. Then you pick your stuff back up, but by the time you get the door open it’s locked again. I’ve had two phones since I started using this app at my new place, the Samsung Galaxy 10 and now the iPhone 12 Pro. The iPhone works a little better, but not much. I also just got an Apple Watch. That app actually seems to work pretty well on there and since the watch is always unlocked and doesn’t involve holding a bulky (compared to keys) phone it’s the only way I can handle living here. The app is so bad I would probably break the lease if it weren’t for the watch.

I cannot even call it a smart lock as there are no smart functions to it. In fact it’s less useful than a key. Each update of the app seems to remove more functionality. It seems in one of the recent updates the ability to use Siri shortcuts was removed which was the one saving grace of not having to physically get my phone out at most doors. Now even that doesn’t work, good luck if you’re carrying groceries or anything else in. Even when the Siri shortcuts were functional they only worked at public area doors and not your own personal lock so I only had to sit everything down and get my phone out once instead of at every door like now. There is no unlock on approach feature with Bluetooth or WiFi like actual smart locks have. If you’re looking to move into a building that forces these locks on you be aware of the monumental pain they are.