Know what you’re carrying.
Porchlight is one layer of a plan, not the whole of it. Here is what it does, where it stops, and what to carry alongside it — now, rather than the day you’re counting on it.
Porchlight is not a rescue service. We don't contact search and rescue — we tell the people named on the plan, and they decide what to do. In an emergency, call 911. Beyond cell coverage, the only reliable way to reach help is a satellite messenger.
A person decides, not a system.
We do not contact search and rescue, and we have no relationship with any agency. Nobody at Porchlight is watching a screen — there is no operations center, and there is no one on call.
Agencies don’t accept automated reports from consumer apps, and they’re right not to: every false dispatch costs money and puts volunteers in the field for nothing. So we tell the people you chose, and a human who knows you decides whether to make the call.
Your location, three times.
We take your location three times: when you file, when you start, and when you choose to send an update. There are no breadcrumbs, no background pings, no live map, and nothing for anyone to watch.
This is a deliberate limit, not a missing feature. Continuous tracking would drain the battery you may need, and it would turn a note left for a friend into surveillance by the people who care about you.
Only the people you name.
Nobody browses trips. There is no feed, no directory, no map of who’s out. Your plan is visible to you and the people you named. Nobody else — not other users, not advertisers, not for any price.
A trailhead logbook tells every stranger who reads it that you’re alone and when you’ll be back. We are the opposite of that.
Carry a beacon for the rest.
Porchlight cannot call for help from the backcountry. It runs on a phone, and phones need signal. If you need to summon help from where there are no bars, carry a satellite messenger — it does a different job, and it does it well.
What we do is notice when you don’t come back.
No streaks, no badges, no trips-survived counter, no celebration when you get home. The best week in Porchlight is a completely silent one. If you find yourself opening the app for any reason other than filing or ending a trip, we’ve built it wrong.
Call 911. Not us. We are a timer and a list of phone numbers.