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For households

Sorting out the keys at home

Most houses have more keys than locks. Keywitch works out which of them are the same key, so you know what you’re actually holding.

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The problem

The drawer nobody wants to deal with

Keys from a previous owner, keys from a tenancy that ended, keys for a window that was replaced, keys cut as spares and never labelled. They accumulate in a drawer or a tin, and nobody throws them out because nobody can be sure what they open.

Photograph the lot in one session. Keywitch groups the duplicates, so you find out you’re holding eleven distinct keys rather than twenty-six. From there you can work out what’s worth keeping, label what you keep, and throw out the rest with some confidence.

You still have to test the ones you keep against your own locks — nothing can tell you what a key opens from a photograph. But testing eleven keys is an afternoon. Testing twenty-six is why the tin is still in the drawer.

What Keywitch does

It reads the cut pattern, so you don’t have to squint.

  1. Photograph the key

    Lay it flat, take a photo. Keywitch finds the blade, works out where the cuts start, and measures the pattern.

  2. It checks your library

    Against every key you’ve already enrolled. Same cut pattern means the same key — even if it’s a different physical copy, on a different ring, from a different year.

  3. You get a record

    Name it, tag it, file it in a folder, add notes. Next time that key turns up, it already knows.

Bulk enrolment photographs a whole box of keys in one session.

When it helps

Not just the drawer

  • Before a house sale or a move. Know what you’re handing over, and hand it over with a record.
  • Keys loaned to family, a cleaner, a house-sitter or a tradesperson. Confirm what came back is what went out.
  • A holiday house, a shed, a storage unit, a boat. Keys you touch twice a year and forget in between.
  • After a renovation. New locks, old keys, and a pile that no longer maps to the house.

Set it up once and leave it. Your library stays there for the next time a key turns up that nobody recognises.

Pricing

Pricing

Keywitch is free while it’s in early access, and every account has every feature. Anyone who signs up during early access keeps access to what they’ve enrolled.

When paid plans arrive

Free

No charge

Enough to see the whole thing work, end to end.

  • One key stored
  • Photograph as many as you like
  • Every photo compared against that key

Household

One-off payment

Sorting out the drawer is a job you do once. You shouldn’t be paying a subscription for it afterwards. Price to be set before paid plans open.

  • Up to 25 keys
  • Photograph as many as you like
  • No subscription, ever

Questions

Questions people ask

Will it recognise a key I had cut somewhere else?
Yes. Keywitch matches on the cut pattern itself, so a spare cut years later at a different shop still reads as the same key. That’s the whole point — a duplicate is recognised by shape, not by anything attached to it.
Can I photograph a whole box of keys at once?
Yes. Bulk enrolment is built for exactly this: photograph the lot in one session, and Keywitch groups the duplicates as it goes. A box of forty often turns out to be half that many distinct keys.
I’ve only got about thirty keys. Is that too small?
Not at all. A drawer of thirty unlabelled keys is exactly the job Keywitch is quickest at, and it’s usually done in one sitting.
Can it tell me what lock a key opens?
Keywitch tells you whether two keys are the same, which is the part that can be worked out from a photograph. What each key opens is something you record against it once — and from then on it’s attached to every copy of that key you enrol.
If someone copied a key and gave the original back, would it know?
No — that’s a genuine match, and Keywitch will say so. It detects a substituted key, not a copied one. Worth knowing where the line is: it confirms you got back the key you handed out, not that no copy was made along the way.
Will I need to keep paying after I’ve sorted my keys out?
No. There’s a one-off option for exactly this reason — it’s a job you do once.
What happens to my data if I stop using it?
You stay in control of it. Delete any key, or close your account, and the photos and measurements go with it. Backups expire within 30 days.

Where to start

Start with one drawer.

The tin in the kitchen. Photograph the keys nobody’s touched in three years and find out how many of them are the same key. It takes twenty minutes.

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