Reachr

Inspiration

Reachr started with a simple thought: when something goes wrong, getting help should not be complicated.

People can find themselves in uncomfortable or unsafe situations while travelling, walking home, going to work, or visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Sometimes they need emergency help, and other times they simply want someone they trust to know where they are.

We wanted to build something that could help with both. That became Reachr, a safety app built around staying connected to people who can help when it matters.

What it does

Reachr brings several personal safety tools into one app. Users can send SOS alerts, create a network of trusted guardians, share their live location, use Walk Me Home while travelling, find nearby hospitals and police stations, and use features such as Fake Call and Anti Stalker.

The idea is to make safety tools available before, during and after an emergency, rather than only focusing on what happens when something goes wrong.

How we built it

We built Reachr with Flutter and used Supabase for the backend, database and real time functionality. Firebase Cloud Messaging is used for notifications and communication between the app and users.

A lot of the work went into connecting these different systems and making the experience simple enough to use quickly. Location sharing, emergency alerts and background activity also required us to work around different Android permissions and restrictions.

We tested the features repeatedly, fixed issues as they appeared and continued changing the app based on what we learned during development.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was making real time features reliable. Sending an alert is one thing, but making sure the right person receives it, receives the correct information and can see the user's location adds several layers of complexity.

Location permissions and Android background restrictions also caused problems during development. There were times when something worked perfectly during testing but behaved differently when the app was running in the background.

Another challenge was keeping the app simple. We have several features, but we did not want Reachr to feel complicated, especially when someone may be using it under pressure.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that Reachr went from an idea to a working application that is now available on Google Play.

We are also proud of bringing several safety functions into one application instead of building a product around only one feature. Getting real time location sharing, emergency alerts, guardian connections and emergency finding to work together took a lot of experimentation and problem solving.

Most importantly, we are proud that we actually built and released the product rather than leaving it as an idea.

What we learned

Reachr taught us that building a safety product requires thinking about situations differently from a normal app.

We learned how important reliability, simplicity and clear user flows are. We also learned a lot about real time communication, location services, notifications, permissions and the limitations that come with mobile platforms.

There was also a lot of learning outside the code. Building Reachr taught us to listen to feedback, test assumptions and accept that some ideas need to be changed once real users interact with them.

What's next for Reachr

We want to keep improving Reachr based on real user feedback and make the existing features more reliable.

We are also working toward expanding the platform with more emergency resources, better community features and broader support across different countries.

The long term vision is to make Reachr a safety network people can rely on wherever they go, connecting them with trusted people and relevant emergency resources when they need them.

Built With

• antigravity
• claude
• cloud
• cloudflare
• firebase
• firebasefcm
• google
• google-cloud
• supabase
• truehost