Comitora: Simulated Call

A call is something you can step out for. Comitora gives you one, on your own phone, at a time you decide. Well-built old houses had a second door for this. A guest could leave without walking through the whole party. Nobody was offended, nobody had to explain. We do not build those doors any more. Comitora is the second door in a house that no longer has one. HOW IT WORKS You decide beforehand who calls: a name, a picture, a ringtone. Then you pick when — in ten seconds, in ten minutes, in half an hour. The opening screen is built so that this takes under three seconds. At the time you set, the phone rings and the call view fills the screen, with the ringtone you picked. You answer it and take the call, or you let it ring. Nothing is dialled. No number, no connection, no other device. WHAT IT CAN DO The call arrives as an alarm, not as a notification. That is the difference between an app that works in a meeting and one that does not: a notification stays silent when the phone is silent. An alarm rings through silent mode and through any Focus, and fills the Lock Screen. You can record the other side of the conversation beforehand and play it back during the call, so there is a voice to answer. It plays through the earpiece. When the call ends, Comitora can show a picture of your choosing instead of its own screen. Rings are counted, not seconds. “It rang four times” is how people talk about calls. Whoever does not pick up gets called back. Once, after a delay you set. Buttons, labels and colours of the call screen are set per profile, with a preview beside them. And anything that comes round regularly can be set as a schedule: Tuesdays at 16:40, every week. WHERE IT DOES NOT HOLD With authorities and in court. In examinations. Anywhere your leaving turns into a disadvantage for somebody else — someone is waiting, someone is liable, someone counted on you. And it is no substitute for a conversation that ought to be had: anyone who leaves the same meeting every week does not have a meeting problem. WHAT COMITORA DOES NOT DO Nobody is called. There is no number, no connection, no network, no account and no sign-in. Comitora works entirely offline. Your recorded voice is typed out on the device so you can tell similar recordings apart — that text stays here as well. No advertising, no analytics, no tracking. The full version is a single one-time purchase; there is no subscription. — Comitora comes from comitas. To the Romans that meant neither etiquette nor manners, but the consideration you cast into a form so that the other person can accept it. An app by devForPeople, a one-person workshop in Oelde, Germany. Its sister app Nostora gives you back the hours that have already gone. Comitora gives you back the ones still to come. For iPhone, iOS 26.5 or later. Questions to [email protected] — I answer every one.