Show HN: KnockKnock – Circular video calls that bring you closer, faster(macOS)

[HamounKarami]

hi hn, i’m ham!

i built KnockKnock! because I missed how easy and spontaneous it used to be to just "knock" on a friend’s door. it’s a native macOS app that sits quietly in your menu bar and lets you video call your friends instantly—no links to generate, no scheduling, just a genuine moment of connection.

it is completely free and exclusive to macOS.

we’re gearing up for our big Product Hunt launch next week, but I really wanted to share it with this community first to hear your thoughts.

[prngl]

Looks nice. Maybe share a bit about the implementation (windowing, networking, security, Mac APIs, …)?

[HamounKarami]

thanks!

windowing: using a transparent nswindow hosting swiftui views for the floating call ui, and nspopover for the menu bar dropdown. we also toggle nsapp.activationpolicy to hide the dock icon when it's just running in the background

networking: livekit handles the webrtc video/audio (it’s been rock solid), with firebase cloud functions generating the tokens and firestore handling the signaling and presence state

security: standard firebase auth for user management, and we use the native macos keychain (ksecclassgenericpassword) to securely store credentials so you don't have to login every time

mac apis: lots of avfoundation for camera/mic permissions, nsstatusitem for the menu bar integration, and unusernotificationcenter to make sure you actually see incoming calls