Kisi

Review by eFreeware

Kisi Inc. offers a security and door access app that runs in the cloud. It lets an Android phone take the place of a keycard, as long as the doors you use have Kisi hardware installed. The main reason to consider it is simple: one app becomes the key to every door you are allowed through, in any building running the system.

That framing matters because Kisi is not a standalone lock pick. It is the phone side of a broader access platform, aimed at two groups: people who need to open doors, and administrators who decide who else can. Both groups get a set of tools that are meant to be quick enough to use in passing rather than as a task in itself.

The app is free to download, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases. It has been on Google Play since July 2013 and reports over 500,000 installs with a 4.7 average across 4,271 ratings.

Opening doors without reaching for a card

The everyday job here is unlocking. The app lists the doors you have been given access to, and you open one from that list. For a single entrance that is barely more effort than a keycard, but the value shows up in buildings where you move between floors, wings or separate sites and would otherwise carry a ring of credentials.

Tap-to-unlock changes the gesture rather than the idea. You hold the phone against a Kisi Reader and the door opens, which is the closest thing to the card tap people already know. The developer notes that this mode needs NFC access, and that some doors may also require location access before they will unlock, so the phone has to be permitted to do its part.

Motion Sense is the more interesting option. A wave of the hand opens the door without you actively using the phone, which suits anyone whose hands are full, whether that is a tray of coffee, a box of samples or a laptop bag. It relies on Bluetooth and a foreground service, so it is a mode to enable deliberately.

Intercoms and wrist access

Two features extend the app beyond the doorway itself. Video intercoms let you speak with visitors through your phone, so a delivery or an appointment can be handled without walking to a panel. That requires foreground service permissions, and it is the sort of feature that matters most to people who sit away from the entrance they are responsible for.

Wear OS support puts the same door access on your wrist. I would expect this to appeal to staff who move around a site all day and would rather not pull out a phone at every threshold. It is a convenience layer on top of the phone app.

The single-key idea ties these together. One credential covers any door in any building you have been granted, which is the part that scales as an organization adds locations. For a person working across several sites, that is the difference between a pocket full of cards and nothing to remember.

Admin tools for granting and tracking access

Administrators get a second app's worth of function inside the same download. Access can be granted or revoked with one touch, which is the kind of action you want to be trivial when someone joins, leaves or loses a credential. Temporary staff and visitors can be sent access links instead of being issued hardware.

Reporting is built around place and date. You can look at user activity at a given location for a chosen day, which is the basic question most facilities teams ask after an incident or before a review. Scheduled unlocks are also available, so a door can be set to open at predictable times without someone standing there.

Security-related notifications round out the admin side, keeping relevant events in front of the person who needs to act on them. I would treat this as a set of capabilities to evaluate against your own procedures rather than a fixed workflow.

What appeals to me about this split is that the same app serves the person opening a door and the person deciding who can. That keeps the experience consistent across a team, though it also means the app carries more surface area than a simple key app would.

What you need before any of it works

Kisi is the phone end of a system, so the doors have to be equipped with Kisi hardware before the app has anything to open. That is the first requirement. If your building does not run Kisi, there is nothing here to unlock.

The features then draw on phone capabilities in specific ways. Tap-to-unlock needs NFC access, and some doors may additionally require location access. Motion Sense needs Bluetooth and a foreground service. Intercoms need foreground service permissions as well. These are worth reading as a checklist against the phones your team actually carries.

A recent update reworked the main screen for better use of space, fitting more door cards on small displays and folded foldables. Performance work is also mentioned. For anyone juggling a long list of doors, that is a small but sensible improvement in the screen you look at most.

Where Kisi fits best

This is an app for organizations that have already committed to Kisi for their access control, and for the people those organizations let in. Offices, shared buildings and multi-site operations are the obvious settings, because the benefit grows with the number of doors and the number of people who need different combinations of them.

On the individual side, it suits anyone whose day involves moving through several controlled doors and who would rather carry a phone than a wallet of cards. The intercom and wrist features add most for staff who are stationary at a desk or constantly in motion around a site, respectively.

On the admin side, it fits managers and facilities teams who need to add or remove access quickly and check what happened at a location on a given date. The one-touch grant and revoke, visitor links and scheduled unlocks are aimed at exactly that kind of routine work.

It is a free download with no ads and no in-app purchases, and the 4.7 average from 4,271 ratings suggests the people using it are broadly satisfied.

A practical key for Kisi-equipped buildings

Kisi does one job well in principle: it turns an Android phone into the credential for doors that are part of a Kisi system, and it gives administrators the tools to decide who holds that credential. The mix of list-based unlocking, tap-to-unlock, hand-wave access, video intercom and Wear OS covers the ways people actually approach a door.

The conditions are clear. You need Kisi-equipped doors, and you need to grant the app the permissions each mode depends on. If those two things are true, the app looks like a tidy way to retire the keycard without adding much friction to anyone's day.

I would recommend it to teams already running Kisi and to the staff and visitors they manage through it. For a building without that hardware, the app has nothing to open.

What's new

- Redesigned main screen: The main screen has been updated to better utilize available space, allowing more door cards to be displayed on devices with smaller screens, including foldables in their folded state. - Performance optimizations for a smoother and more responsive experience.