Across your Apple devices

CareHaven does not stay locked inside one app icon. It meets you where your hands already are — on the Lock Screen during a seizure, on your wrist while you are holding your person, in the car with Siri, and on the other devices you already use.

Everything here works with the tools Apple built into your iPhone. You do not set up accounts or wire anything together. The pieces that matter most show up on their own when the moment calls for them.

This page is a tour. Each item links to a fuller walkthrough where one exists.

The seizure timer on your Lock Screen

Available

When you start the seizure timer — Main Menu -> Medical -> Seizures, then tap the stopwatch button — the count appears right on your Lock Screen as a Live Activity — and on the Dynamic Island if your iPhone has one. The elapsed time refreshes every second, and you can glance at it without unlocking the phone.

This matters in a real seizure. You may need to swipe over to dial for help or photograph what is happening. The timer keeps running on the Lock Screen the whole time, so you never lose the count. You can stop the timer right from the Lock Screen with a long-press — and from the Dynamic Island the same way — without opening the app.

The card turns a coral tint when the timer crosses five minutes — the point where current guidance is to call for emergency help, since after that a seizure is less likely to stop on its own. You see that warning whether the phone is in your hand or face-up on the table.

What lives on the card is deliberately simple:

• The live elapsed time, refreshed by the system every second
• A coral background tint once you cross the five-minute "call EMS" threshold
• A stop button, on the expanded Lock Screen and on a Dynamic Island long-press

A common way to use it: start the timer on the Watch or the iPhone, then put the phone down. The Live Activity tells you the elapsed time, so you do not have to wake the phone every fifteen seconds to check.

See Walkthrough: Log a seizure with the timer. For what to watch for during and after, see Medical.

Apple Watch

Available

The Watch app is for the moments your hands are busy — feeding, holding your person, driving. It carries a few simple pages:

• Now — a glance at what the iPhone last sent over: the last feeding, the latest mood, today's counts, and the next appointment.
• Quick Log — one tap to log a feeding, a diaper, a mood (1–5), a regulation check-in, or a quick note. Every successful log gives you a small buzz so you can tap without looking and still feel that it landed.
• Schedule — the next upcoming appointment with a countdown to when it starts.
• Seizure — a stopwatch built for the wrist. It keeps the screen lit while it runs, captures heart rate, and buzzes you at the clinical thresholds — 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, and 5 minutes — so you do not have to watch the clock. When you stop it, it logs a seizure event for you.

You can also dictate a note with your voice straight from your wrist. If the iPhone is out of range, your taps queue up on the Watch and sync the moment the two reconnect — and each entry is matched up individually as it syncs, so nothing is lost and nothing is logged twice.

The seizure timer is the page caregivers lean on most. With a phone stopwatch it is easy to lose track of the five-minute "call for help" mark when adrenaline is high — the buzz at five minutes does not depend on you watching the clock.

See Walkthrough: Using the Apple Watch app.

CarPlay, through Siri

Available

In the car, CareHaven works hands-free through Siri. You keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel, and just say what you need:

• "Hey Siri, log a feeding in CareHaven"
• "Hey Siri, log a meltdown in CareHaven"
• "Hey Siri, quick note in CareHaven: she napped the whole drive"
• "Hey Siri, what's next in CareHaven"
• "Hey Siri, ask CareHaven what helps with sensory overload"

Siri speaks the result back to you and logs against the person you have open in the app. Behaviors often happen in the car — a stressful transition, sensory overload from the trip, friction between siblings — and this lets you capture the moment without stopping.

The first time you use a phrase, Siri may ask you to unlock the phone once to confirm. After that it runs entirely in audio.

Siri and Shortcuts

Available

The same voice commands work anywhere, not just in the car. CareHaven opens up the events you log most often as hands-free commands, so you can capture them without opening the app:

• "Log a feeding" or "log a bottle"
• "Log a diaper," "log a pee," or "log a poop"
• "Log a behavior" — you can say the type
• "Log a mood" or "log a regulation level"
• "Log a fall"
• "Add a quick note"
• "Open today's schedule" or "what's next on the schedule"
• "Ask CareHaven about [topic]"

Because these are built as Shortcuts, you can also fold them into your own routines and automations on the iPhone. Pair them with Focus and automation triggers — for example, log a feeding automatically when you press the shortcut on your AirPods Pro, or start a behavior log when a specific contact texts you.

A small tip: add a Lock Screen widget for your three most-used Shortcuts. That is faster than even unlocking the phone, and it keeps your hands free.

Spotlight search

Available

Your CareHaven records show up in your iPhone's own search. Swipe down on the Home Screen, type a name, a phrase, or a word from one of your notes, and matching items appear right alongside your apps and contacts. Tap one and it opens straight to the right place in CareHaven.

Some things are kept out of Spotlight on purpose. Sensitive plans — like your crisis plans and your Letter of Intent — never surface in the phone's system search, and even for the items that do, the phone shows only a title, a person, and a date. The note bodies, the clinical detail, and the step-by-step text stay inside the app, where a glance over your shoulder on a shared device can't read them.

For searching inside the app itself, see Search & Ask CareHaven.

Translation

Available

A handoff brief or a doctor-visit recap can be translated on the spot using Apple's built-in Translation. If the person stepping in for you — a sitter, a relief caregiver, a school aide — reads another language, you can hand them the same brief in their own words without retyping anything. Open the handoff at Main Menu -> Team -> Handoff, or a visit at Main Menu -> Medical -> Doctor visits, and look for the translate option inside the share flow.

See Sharing & reports.

Image Playground

Available

When you build a cue card (Main Menu -> Care Plan -> Cue Guide, then add or open a cue), CareHaven can generate a simple, AAC-style illustration for it using Apple's Image Playground, right on your device. It gives a picture-based cue a clear, friendly image without you having to find or draw one.

See Advocacy & goals.

Genmoji

Available

Anywhere you type in CareHaven, you can use the system keyboard's Genmoji to drop in a custom emoji — a small, human touch for a note or a label.

StandBy widgets

Available

Set your iPhone on its side in a charger and CareHaven can show your day at a glance from across the room. The Day Shape view gives you a quiet read on how the day is going — what's been eaten, the behavior count, the mood trend, and the next appointment — and it includes a quick-note button you can tap right from StandBy to jot a note or log something without picking the phone up. A wall-display view turns the phone into an ambient screen. It is a calm way for the next caregiver to catch up without having to ask.

It comes in three sizes, so you can pick how much detail you want from across the room:

• Small — the day shape: a ring per metric, each one filling up as the day moves against a typical day
• Medium — adds the next appointment and a one-line summary of behavior
• Large — the full day overview, with a mood line and feeding times

It is the same readout in three places: this StandBy widget, a Lock Screen widget, and a Home Screen widget — same data, same look, your choice of where it lives. Parking the phone on the kitchen counter during meals is a common way to use it, so the next caregiver sees the day without having to ask.

See The Home screen (Day Shape).

Wall Display (always-on ambient mode)

Available

Wall Display is an always-on ambient mode for an old iPhone or iPad you mount somewhere the whole household passes by — a kitchen counter, the fridge, the care recipient's room. It shows today's most relevant facts large enough to read from across the room: the time, the next event, who is currently with the person, and the current mood.

What's on screen:

• A big clock and date
• The current person and their mood or regulation level
• The next appointment or scheduled event
• Rotating tips from the Caregiver Tips collection
• A screen that auto-dims after a stretch of no use, brightens when you tap it, and switches to a calm red-on-black night palette when the room goes dark

Wall Display is the one screen in CareHaven that is allowed to rotate to landscape, so a phone mounted sideways on a counter still reads correctly.

A common way to use it: mount an old iPhone with a magnet on the fridge and leave Wall Display running. A substitute caregiver, family, and the care recipient all see the same shared "current state" without anyone having to ask.

The Emergency Lock Screen widget

Available

You can place a small Emergency widget on your iPhone's Lock Screen that shows the most critical facts about your person — name, age, a primary diagnosis, an allergy — so that a paramedic, a school nurse, or anyone holding the phone in an emergency sees what matters first, without unlocking it.

It comes in three shapes, from a fuller rectangular card down to a single glyph or one line above the clock. It shows only those few first-responder details on purpose; the rest of the record stays private inside the app.

See Walkthrough: Set up the Emergency Lock Screen widget.

The handoff App Clip, nearby handoff

Available

When you hand off to a sitter who does not have CareHaven, you can pass a read-only mini-handoff packet to their nearby iPhone — they do not have to install anything. The briefing opens in the App Clip on their own phone, so they get a clean copy of the key details, and nothing of yours is left behind on it.

See Walkthrough: Create a handoff for a sitter.

NFC sticker — tap to read the latest handoff

Available

An NFC sticker holds your latest Handoff briefing link. Anyone who taps an iPhone to the sticker sees a read-only copy of the briefing in the App Clip — no install required. It is the same read-only packet as a nearby handoff, just parked on a sticker so it is always there to tap.

Where it helps to place one:

• On the fridge — for emergencies at home, so EMS, a neighbor, or family can read the basics
• Inside the diaper bag or wheelchair pouch — where a first responder can find it
• At school, the day program, or a respite facility — for when staff change
• In custody-shared homes — write one sticker per household, and re-write it whenever things change

How to write one:

1. Buy NTAG215 or NTAG216 stickers — they run about $10 for ten.
2. Open Handoff from the menu and generate today's briefing.
3. Tap Write to fridge sticker (NFC).
4. Hold your iPhone over the sticker — CareHaven writes the link. Each write replaces the last one, so an old sticker simply stops working.

One thing to keep in mind: the link embeds a snapshot of the briefing that does not update on its own. Re-write the sticker whenever the person's medications, diagnoses, or contacts change in a meaningful way, so a tap never pulls up stale facts.

Apple Health

Available

CareHaven works two ways with Apple Health for vitals, sleep, and cycle. The vitals you log can sync over to Apple Health, and CareHaven can read sleep, cycle, and vitals back in. What moves across:

• Vitals — heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, temperature, weight, and height
• Sleep — in-bed time, and sleep stages when your devices capture them
• Cycle — flow and symptoms, for menstruation tracking

There is one firm rule: this only happens for the profile you have marked as yourself — the phone's owner. A child's or care-recipient's profile never touches Apple Health, and CareHaven refuses to touch the Health store at all unless the profile is flagged as the device owner. You also approve each kind of data separately when the phone asks, the same per-type permissions Apple Health uses everywhere else.

On your own profile, a read-only Health Signals readout is inside Main Menu -> Medical — it shows the deeper numbers Apple Health already holds for you — last night's sleep stages, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, blood oxygen, breathing rate, and your cycle day if you track it — with one honest, plain-language note. CareHaven keeps no copy of any of it; the data stays on your phone.

If you want longer trends, Apple Health's own Trends layer adds 6-month and 1-year views on top of what CareHaven shows — handy for a clinician visit where they would rather see Apple's standard charts.

For how CareHaven protects everything else, see Privacy & security (in depth).

What's still coming

A few Apple-ecosystem touches are built or planned as fast-follows rather than shipping in today's beta:

• A Lock Screen and Control Center shortcut, plus a Siri "I need a minute" command, for the in-the-moment breathing and grounding reset. The reset itself works inside the app today. Coming soon
• Putting your crisis plans onto the Lock Screen, the Dynamic Island, the Watch, and Siri. Today, only the seizure timer reaches the Lock Screen. Coming soon

To see how every feature fits together, browse the Full feature catalog. For what landed in the latest build, see What's new.