Guarding
12 min
Stop guarding
Charger
Plugged in
Battery
84%
Shared watch
The alarm sounds on your friend's phone too.
Share the watch
Leave the phone charging and me switched on. If anyone pulls the cable, I scream.
Cable pulled? You'll hear me. Very loudly.
I guard exactly one thing – the charging cable. The moment somebody pulls it out, the siren goes off at full blast. Even when your phone is completely silenced.
Only you can switch me off.
This is my pride and joy. The alarm can only be stopped inside the app, and nobody opens the app from a locked screen. Your lock screen is my main safeguard – a thief holding a screaming phone can do precisely nothing about it.
Your friend hears it too. Nothing to install.
Sharing the watch with somebody at your table is easy: show them the QR code, send a link, or read four words out loud. Any trouble sets off the alarm on their phone too. All they need is an ordinary browser.
And if the thief switches the phone off to shut me up? That will not help either. The silence is the signal – your friend's phone starts screaming straight away.
Got four words from somebody? Open the watch →
Plug it in. Leave the rest to me.
- Plug in your phone
- Switch me on
- Walk away
There is nothing else to set up. No account, no registration, no seven-screen tutorial. Smoke yourself a kipper – the phone will still be there for breakfast.
Where people leave me on guard
-
The pub
The charger is round the corner by the bar and your back is turned.
-
The hostel
Your phone is on the floor across the room while you sleep on the top bunk.
-
The toddler
Curious little hands love pulling cables. You would find out in the morning, with a dead phone. I find out immediately.
A festival
A charging tent, a hundred identical cables and nobody keeping an eye on them.
A train
A socket under the seat. Out of sight for six hours, with half the train past it.
A café
The socket is under the next table and your laptop is on yours.
A shared flat
A socket in the hallway, because there is no free one left in the room.
The cable is the first thing a thief has to touch. So it is the only thing I watch – and why an unplug alarm works reliably anywhere.
What I don't do
No ads – not now, not later. I guard your phone, not your attention. I do not track your location, photograph thieves through the front camera, or bother with motion or Wi-Fi. I am not playing at being some miraculous AI and my IQ is nowhere near 6000: I do one thing and I do it properly. I will not pester you for permissions I have no use for.
You do not have to take my word for it: in Google Play, the Data safety section lists a single item – app activity, optional, for statistics. No location, no identifiers, no diagnostics.
Basic guarding works completely offline. A shared watch is encrypted so that not even we can read it on the way. How that works.
Me and the rest of the category.
The category is full of apps that promise everything. Here is where I differ.
| Others | Pubby | |
|---|---|---|
| Alarm when the cable is pulled | Yes | Yes |
| Basic guarding is free | No | Yes |
| No pointless permissions | No | Yes |
| No ads | No | Yes |
| Leaves the battery alone | No | Yes |
| Beats silent and Do Not Disturb | No | Yes |
| Reaches you with the phone off | No | Yes |
| No personal data | No | Yes |
| Shared watch in a browser | No | Yes |
| Webhook into your own automation | No | Yes |
| Arming from Tasker or MacroDroid | No | Yes |
| Modern Material Design | No | Yes |
| Made in Europe | No | Yes |
This is what the category usually looks like, not a measurement of one particular app.
Before you trust me with it.
Does it work with the phone on silent?
Yes. The siren plays on the alarm channel and forces the volume straight back to maximum every second. Silent mode, do-not-disturb and a finger held on the volume-down key all lose.
What if the thief simply switches the phone off?
At that moment it stops reporting to the shared watch, and the watch reads that sudden silence as an alarm – your friend's browser starts screaming. If you are not using a shared watch, a phone that is off logically has nothing left to make a sound with. We promise no miracles and we will not pull the wool over your eyes.
Does guarding survive a reboot?
No. After a restart guarding is inactive until you start it again. A shared watch exists for exactly this case.
Does it need the internet?
Basic guarding does not. Cable detection and the siren run entirely inside the phone. Only a shared watch needs the internet, and then only to carry encrypted state that not even we can read.
Will it drain the battery?
Not at all. The app waits passively for the system to report a charging change and draws nothing of its own – and the phone is in a socket the whole time anyway. On a Pixel I kept watch through a whole night with no battery-optimisation exemption.
Is it really free?
Guarding and the siren are, and for good – not free for a week. No ads, no account, nothing that leads back to you. The one thing you pay for is VIP: the shared watch, your own siren sound, the flash, a delay before the siren starts, and a webhook. Seven days to try it with no card, and anybody who invites five friends keeps it.
Not sure an alarm app does what its listing says? Five tests, two minutes.
What people write about us.
Finally an app that does exactly what it promises and does it brilliantly!
The squeak is so unpleasant and loud that everyone must notice it.
This app will let you know when your phone is abruptly disconnected! Excellent idea!
The less flattering ones too. All the reviews on Google Play