Help
What this app does
It recognises a key from a photograph of it. Photograph a key and Keywitch measures its blade profile — the pattern of cuts along the edge that makes it that key and no other — and stores that against your account. Photograph an unlabelled key later and it's compared against everything you've already saved.
Saving and identifying are the same action: every photo you take is measured and compared. If it matches a key you already have, you're told which one. If it doesn't, it's saved as a new key so it can be matched next time.
Taking a photo it can read
Almost every failed recognition is a photo problem rather than a key problem, so this is the part worth getting right.
- One key per photo. Two keys in frame and the app measures the wrong one.
- The whole key, head included. The head is where the blade is measured from; if it's cropped off, the measurement starts in the wrong place.
- Flat on a plain background. A dark, non-reflective surface usually works best. Glossy black desks are the exception — they throw reflections the app reads as part of the key.
- Keep the ring and other keys clear of the blade. The ring itself can stay on, and a bit of clutter at the edge of the shot is fine — what breaks a reading is anything lying across the cuts, because the cuts are what's being measured.
- Even light, no hard shadow. A shadow with a crisp edge can be mistaken for the key itself.
- Hold still. A blurred edge blurs the cuts, which is exactly what's being measured.
Use Take Photos rather than an existing photo where you can: the dashed guide frames the shot for you, and only what's inside it is used.
What it can't do
It can't recognise a key it has never seen — it matches against your own saved keys, nothing else. It won't cut a key, open a lock, or tell you anything about the lock a key belongs to. Double-sided and dimple keys aren't read reliably yet. And a poor photo produces a poor match, so treat a result as a strong suggestion to check, not a guarantee.
Still stuck?
Email support@keywitch.com.au. If it's about a key that wasn't recognised, say which one and roughly when you photographed it — that's usually enough to find the photo and see what happened.