Leave a Review Latch App
Just not there yet
Cool concept but the technology really just isn’t there yet for this to be a convenient, reliable and seamless way of unlocking spaces. Extremely inconsistent, crazy latency, (every other day I’ll be standing in front of doors for 10 minutes quitting and restarting the app just for it to tell me I haven’t used that door before, which is untrue). In elevators, by the time I’m able to scan to unlock, the elevator has already gone past my floor, not to mention the frustration of needing to open the app and use it with hands full. It should be a tap and instant unlock without even having to open the app if the user can choose to grant access (so that I can leave my phone in my pocket and not have to fumble to find my phone and open the app and then wait again for unlock). Maybe I should be blaming my apartment for even installing these in elevators and many other spaces. I’ve noticed it does work better for Apple Watch users. I’m so frustrated that when I’ve had friends over I simply go and pick them up/let them out just so I don’t have to deal with granting permission using this app.Show lessychen513
Slow, buggy, fix to a non-existent problem.
My apartment complex switched to latch late last year and it’s not gotten better. It’s slow, glitchy, and is overall a worse experience than just a simple key or key fob. Will not be renewing my lease and will be sure to never rent again at a complex that uses Latch (yes, it’s that bad).
They say “make sure your app is up to date” it is always running latest version.. still slow and buggy.
They say “make sure your operating system is up to days” it is always running latest iOS version.. still slow and buggy.
They then say “oh it’s because you have the latest iOS.. the next latch update will improve it” .. and it never does. Always slow. Always buggy.
At risk of sounding old, what was wrong with regular old keys? My regular key worked during power outages. I could click my old key fob attached to my keychain to easily get in our garage gate.. but now I need to fumble around on a clunky app that is slow and only works 1/3 of the time to open a gate. I understand there is a play in harvesting all our user data and personal information and good job to whoever at Latch convinced these property managers that Latch is somehow an improvement.. because it’s not. It’s just another instance of technology solving non-existent problems and making things less efficient than before.Show lessAustin19028247
Horrible, horrible app
This app is so glitchy and horrible, the only thing I hate more is my building’s management company that decided to stick with it despite everyone hating it. We’ve lived in this apartment building for 2 years, and can think of at least a dozen times when we have either been locked out of the building or our apartment because the app has not worked, and then at least one instance the building’s power went out and literally nobody could get in the building, the elevator, or the apartments, because none of it works without power.
You know what doesn’t fail from an electrical outage? Keys.
And even when the app is supposedly working, it is incredibly slow to respond, and on at least two occasions, my wife has been afraid for her safety when trying to get into our building late at night and somebody has followed her—and the app didn’t work such that she was stuck on the sidewalk trying to get into our building with a person following her.
We have brought up all of these concerns to the building multiple times (as have *many* people we’ve met in our building), and they continue to use this incredibly substandard app. I really don’t hope this ever happens, but if someone is assaulted on the street because this app isn’t working and they couldn’t get into their home, I hope that they can cite this as one of many examples of gross negligence of any building choosing to use this horrible app to save a few bucks.Show lessbballjdm
Good Concept, Still Buggy
Going to be honest, it’s a great concept. The ability to remotely unlock doors, give temporary keys etc is awesome and deserves 2 stars. The app however is where that ends. While the app has been updated a lot recently, there are still a tremendous amount of bugs that make using Latch frustrating. The delay to unlock doors is 3-6 seconds per door when it functions right, and often times that is being generous. The widget on iOS often crashes when using a shortcut, or will get stuck in an endless “unlocking” cycle where the bar gets stuck and you have to reboot the app. Every other day the widget just disappears and tells you to setup latch - that’s always lovely when you have a hand full of groceries trying to get in a door. Hopefully improvements keep coming, but for now I wouldn’t be able to recommend.Show lessSqish
Batteries drain and die rapidly
I love parts of our building’s new Latch system (like being able to use Siri to open locks when my hands are full or tapping my suite’s entry button while on the elevator so the door is unlocked when I get there), but the fact that the Latch people say that Duracell batteries are basically the only ones that work well adds so much cost and it’s not like the batteries last a few years. Our building has had these locks installed about 2 years and I’ve had to replace the batteries twice. Keep in mind, I live alone and haven’t been going out much over the last couple years due to recovery from multiple surgeries. That means that if more people live in your home or if you engage or unlock your door more than me (I would guess I do so 6-8x per week - meaning I leave my unit 3 to 4x per week on average), you’ll be replacing your batteries multiple times a year and buying Duracell gets pricy!Show lessMelba73
Developer Response
Dear Melba, thank you for taking the time to review us. We are glad that you are enjoying the app and will consider the suggestion about the batteries. Thanks for the feedback and review!Has Potential
First off, the fundamental functionality of a lock is to lock AND unlock. This app only allows unlocking. Furthermore, given the smart lock and a smart phone being involved, you can’t check the status of your door lock. It just always says “unlock” regardless of the status. Also, when I have the app open and get within Bluetooth range of my lock but haven’t selected “unlock” yet, the app immediately crashes and I have to open it again to get in my door. There are also many times when the app is open I put the phone up to the lock and it doesn’t do anything yet there isn’t an error or anything and this happens on the Apple Watch as well. I also get the “open the latch app on your phone to use” oftentimes when I go for a ran and I don’t have my phone. That’s sorta the purpose of using the Apple Watch I would think. Highly annoying when you can’t get in because the watch app isn’t working correct. Overall, the QA department needs some help I think as it’s obvious that the app isn’t tested very well. These issues have persisted for months with no fixes.Show lesscougardent
Latch is slower than using keys, terrible UI, widgets don’t work.
My apartment building switched over to latch and every single door has a latch lock. Latch simply doesn’t work reliably. You can’t use the app to open a communal door, keep the app open in your hand (like you would a key) and unlock your door. The app seemingly times out and randomly logs you out. The widget simply does not work, once you set it up it will work for 5 seconds and then the widget reverts back to a setup widget. The app directly conflicts with Apple Pay and latch should just add support so I don’t have to open their unreliable app.
I’ve only had issues with latch and wish I had physical keys again. This is across 4 phones now and I’ve done everything on my end to troubleshoot. Latch needs to put in the QA work to fix their app. As of right now it’s a coin toss every single day whether the app will let me in to my apartment or garage.Show lessWhint
Developer Response
Hello Whint, thank you for your review. We apologize for any inconvenience you experienced while using our app. Please get in touch with us at support@latch.com if you have any other issues or suggestions. We value your feedback.Okay- but has potential
My apartment building uses Latch exclusively vs keys. When I moved in a month ago the phone app was almost unusable. Most of the time long time connect left me standing outside or on an elevator that I couldn’t control.
The watch companion app was nearly infallible and I found it was the sole way for me to get around. Since I have a cellular watch I could leave my phone. I did have to turn off Applepay on my watch to use the app reliably but since I need to use it more than using my watch to pay it seemed an acceptable trade off.
Not sure if it was the most recent iOS update (minor one this week) but now the phone app works and the watch no longer does.
The watch app just says connecting and I have yet to get it to work now.
I would like to see something in the wallet app allowing me quicker access. The unlock time needs to be faster, especially for the elevators and watch app needs immediate improvement.Show lessiloveapplegrl
App treats “network error” as “logout”, locking me in basement.
There’s a critical defect in how the Latch app handles the monthly session expiration, that interacts badly with parking garages.
The app only refreshes the session when it expires, rather than refreshing in the week leading up to expiration, and if the iPhone is in a “SOS-only” cellular service zone, the Latch app logs out and throws away all unlock access, locking you out while you’re trapped in a parking garage.
Latch developers, please refresh your sessions starting one week before expiry (or implement OAuth refresh tokens and refresh them on every lock-metadata upload to your servers), and please stop logging us out on network errors that are not “401 Unauthorized” replies (and verify that you don’t cause a global lockout if you accidentally send a 500 server error for a day, like another of our apartment services is doing right now).Show lessAngharad Gwyn
Developer Response
Hi Angharad, we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Thank you for your detailed feedback! We will pass this on to our development team. If you have any other suggestions or feedback please reach out to us at support@latch.com to provide us with more details. Thank you for your time.Not user friendly / Needs improvement
While a great idea. Whoever thought this up gave up and left it average instead of making it great. I’ve tried to reach out to company to give feedback but it’s very difficult to figure out how. Hopefully someone reads this!
1) Shoulld be a way to save frequently used locks for example every single time I get a delivery I have to scroll though the entire list of doors and select the three I need. HUGE WASTE OF TIME. Should be able to select “Delivery” and those doors are automatically selected.
2) when sending entrance codes to people the way each door is listed is very confusing and wordy to the person receiving the codes
3) app doesn’t work half the time and you have to close out and reopen it and keep holding your phone over the lock
4) numbers on the lock are tiny and difficult to press for older people
5) no easy way to contact support
6) when giving long term access there should be the ability to block out certain dates and times basically customize the app access for example for a home health care nurse who only comes on certain days
C’mon LATCH. DO BETTERShow lessEDM Fan1
Developer Response
Hello, thank you for taking the time to leave a review, we really appreciate the detailed feedback. We will take every item into consideration and communicate it to our development team. Please contact us at support@latch.com. Thank you for helping us improve!
