KnockKnock! is built for small, trusted circles: teammates, friends, and family. No meeting links, no waiting rooms — just quick, direct calls that don't take up your whole screen. Mac-native one-click video calling with LiveKit low-latency streaming, secure Firebase sign-in, and customizable colours and themes. Floating call windows and 5-minute limits make every interaction spontaneous, focused, and fun — perfect for quick, meaningful connections anytime.
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I’m Ham (@HamKarami) and for the past 12 months I’ve been building KnockKnock on evenings and weekends. Developers quoted me over $50K to build something like this, but with ChatGPT and a lot of vibecoding (being a prompt mule hurts), I was able to prototype, iterate, and actually ship it myself. I did do a code audit with some "real" human developers to get it ready for prod, so no denying that!
What it is:
KnockKnock is a free video-calling app for close friends and even closer colleagues. It’s not Zoom, it’s not Meet, and it’s definitely not another meeting tool. It’s about creating tiny, intentional moments of connection — especially for high-performing teams or tight-knit groups of friends who don’t want to get sucked into long calls.
The rules are simple:
Strictly 5-minute video calls (you can’t go longer)
A clean, non-intrusive UI that gets out of your way
Smart handling of calls behind the scenes (built with Firebase + LiveKit, plus custom logic to handle permissions, call teardown, retries, etc.)
And today I’m most excited to launch Themes — customizable backlight rings and images around your video that make every call feel personal. For the old folks in the room, if you remember windows media players custom skins, I get mad nostalgia vibes from the UI experience in KnockKnock.
Theming was a big lift technically for me, but the result feels delightful. Every time I demo it to a friend, I always look for their smile and it never lets me down. Its about time someone built something like this and I feel like it has been missing from my life for too long.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Going forward, I will be looking to add a Theme store with even more drip. I will work with an animation company to build some pretty cool ones that I have in mind. Who knows maybe even license a few with some movies and brands that I like.
Looking forward to your feedback!
Wow, KnockKnock! This is so cool! The 5-minute limit is genius for focused check-ins. Im curious, how well does it handle low-bandwidth situations on mobile hotspots?
KnockKnock! is such a cool idea! I love the spontaneous 5-minute limit. How do you handle notifications when the other person is in Do Not Disturb mode?
I loved it ever since I started beta testing it. It has come a long way since and getting better and better every update. Ham has been passionately working on Knock Knock for while and I am glad to see the grand opening too. Way to go 🥳🚀
Reminds me of Around and Multi/Remotion. I’m fine with opinionated software but I’d consider not forcing five and five.
Love the 5‑min hard stop. My calls always balloon. The door knock + tiny floating circle feels cozy, not meeting-y. Themes give me WMP skin flashbacks lol. Mac-only is a bummer for my PC at home, but I'll try it on the work Mac. Feels right.
