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What is a witness?

Updated September 2026

A witness is a partner without the key. They watch the same commitment your keyholder watches, and they hold nothing: no veto on an early exit, no approval code on their card, and no decline link in their mail. You can have up to three of them, they can be added and removed at any point in a term, and the app names the difference on the card you tap to invite one: they see status but never hold the key.

What the role is, and what it is not

Fold'em has exactly one keyholder and up to three witnesses. The keyholder is the person who answers if you ask to leave early. A witness is there to know, and that is the whole role. The separation is enforced at the source of the credential rather than by hiding a button: the approval code and the decline link are minted only for an active keyholder, so a witness card carries neither, and a person who somehow listed themselves as a witness with their own address still gets a card with nothing to press.

Everything else follows from that. A witness gets no say in an exit, cannot slow one down or speed one up, and is not asked anything. Their card is the keyholder card minus the ask and the code.

What a witness sees

Less than a keyholder, and stated as a subset of the same list rather than as a second list, so the two can never drift apart. A witness sees items 1 to 5 and 7 of what your keyholder sees, and the date your protection ends if you end early. Never the request itself, and nothing else.

That last part is a deliberate line. A witness learns about an early exit only by its outcome, the ending date on their card, and never by the request being open. Muting an alert category is on their list too, so quieting the noise is visible to them the same way it is to a keyholder.

What your keyholder sees, and what they never see Two columns. On the left, the eleven things a keyholder can see: your first name, whether protection is on and which status word, how far through the term you are, a count of blocked attempts, milestones you reached, an exit request, which alerts you muted, a lapsed subscription, the deletion lock, a handover, and a notice if you close your account. Six of them carry a dot: a witness sees only those six. On the right, four things struck through that never reach anyone: which apps or sites, anything you browse, any amount of money, anything you typed. WHAT MARIA CAN SEE NO ONE SEES Your first name Protection on, and its word How far through the term A count of blocked attempts Milestones you reached An exit request Which alerts you muted A lapsed subscription The deletion lock A handover If you close your account A witness sees only these six Which apps or sites Anything you browse Any amount of money Anything you typed The money you keep is worked out on your phone
A keyholder can see eleven things, from your first name to a notice if you close the account. A witness sees six of them. No one sees which apps or sites, anything you browse, any amount of money, or anything you typed.

Adding one

  1. Name them and share the link

    Add a witness asks for a first name and hands you the same kind of signed link a keyholder invite uses, through your own share sheet. The person accepts the same way, with their own email address and a six digit code, and the link they open takes them to a page written for the witness role rather than the keyholder one.

    The Add a witness screen with a Their name field and the Copy, Messages, Instagram and WhatsApp share channels.

    Add a witness

  2. Watch the places fill

    The witness row shows the three places and how many are taken. A witness who has not accepted yet wears a small waiting badge on their picture and no caption, so the badge is the only visible difference between waiting and accepted. The badge is spoken in full to VoiceOver, which reads the state as part of the person's own label.

    The Circle tab. Below a keyholder place reading Changing hands, the Witnesses row reads 1 of 3 and holds Priya beside an empty Add place.

    Three places

The cap, and where it is enforced

Three is refused when the link is minted rather than when somebody accepts, so a fourth invite is never sent out to strand on arrival. The app also refuses a new witness while an early exit is running, with the line "Not while an early exit is running. Cancel the exit to add one." A handover is different: a key changing hands never shuts the witness door, because adding a witness collides with nothing a handover is doing.

One seat is exempt from the count, and only one: a person invited specifically to take over as your keyholder. Without that exemption a circle already holding three witnesses could never replace its keyholder.

When a witness leaves

You can remove a witness at any time. It is instant, it touches nothing but that one link, and an accepted witness is told; a witness who never accepted is a silent cancellation of the invite. A witness can also step away themselves, and that removes their link and nothing else, with no change to your mode and no floor written on your exit. If you close your account, every active witness is told once.

What this does not do

A witness cannot approve an early exit, cannot keep the lock on, cannot cancel a wait that is running, and has no way to reach your phone. Their leaving does not lengthen or shorten anything, because a witness carries none of the friction a keyholder does. They cannot see which apps or sites you sealed, anything you browse, any amount of money or anything you typed. And a witness is not a second keyholder in waiting: naming one as your successor is its own act, and it needs the current keyholder's approval like any other handover.

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