Sharing care with others (sync)
Care is rarely a one-person job. CareHaven gives you two calm ways to keep everyone on the same page: keep your own iPhone, iPad, and Mac in step, and invite a trusted co-caregiver to follow along for a specific person.
On this page
Both are completely opt-in. Sync is optional and off by default, and you stay in control of who sees what. Available
Across your own devices
menu icon -> Settings -> Sync & Backup -> Sync via iCloud (toggle on). Today this uses your own iCloud: if you use CareHaven on more than one Apple device signed in to the same iCloud account, you can keep them in step. Once the toggle is on, the same people, logs, and settings show up on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Available
This rides on your own private iCloud. There's no CareHaven account to make, and CareHaven can never read your data — it's protected by Apple's encryption in transit and at rest, and if you turn on Apple's Advanced Data Protection, not even Apple can read it.
For more on the backups that ride alongside this, see Privacy & security (in depth) and the Walkthrough: Back up & restore your data.
Inviting a co-caregiver
Main Menu -> Team -> Shared with -> Invite someone. When more than one person helps care for someone, you can invite a co-caregiver to a specific person's profile. Maybe that is your partner, a grandparent, or another family member who needs to see what you are tracking. Available
You stay in control:
- You invite people one at a time, to one person at a time. Sharing one profile never shares the others.
- You choose which sections to share — Feedings, Behaviors, Sleep, and the rest — and the sections you don't pick stay private. A co-caregiver only ever sees what you explicitly granted. Available
- You can pull a co-caregiver's invitation in from your iPhone Contacts, so their name, phone, and email fill in for you. Available
- Invite a co-caregiver and they get access to just the person you're sharing — through Apple's private sharing (the same kind of secure invite Apple's own Notes and Reminders use) — which you can revoke at any time. It's encrypted the whole way, seen only by the people you invite.
- Each co-caregiver needs their own iCloud account to accept. Once they do, their CareHaven fills in with the shared person's history.
- From Build 77, co-caregivers with edit permission sync both ways — what they add flows back to you and your team. View-only access is genuinely enforced, not just a suggestion. Available
Today, every record travels through Apple's CloudKit, encrypted by Apple in transit and at rest, and reachable only by you and the people you specifically invite, each signed into their own Apple account. CareHaven never sees your data — not us, not anyone else.
A good way to start is a narrow share — just Feedings and Behaviors, say — and then add more sections later as the trust relationship builds. You can always widen the share; you never have to grant everything up front.
What a co-caregiver can and cannot do today
From Build 77, sharing is two-way for anyone who accepted your invite on Build 77 or later. Here is exactly what that means:
- A co-caregiver you invite can see the shared person's records, and the records you add or change keep flowing out to them. Available
- Give them edit permission and their own additions and changes flow back to you, and out to everyone else you've invited — typically within seconds. Your device relays between the co-caregivers you share with, so the whole team stays in step even when two people are never looking at their phones at the same moment. Available
- Give them view-only access instead and that's now genuinely enforced. A view-only co-caregiver can look, never add or change — on their device and in Apple's private sharing, not just in CareHaven's own interface. Available
- The calendar comes with it, both ways: appointments (with their repeat pattern), the coverage plan, and routine check-offs in the sections you granted flow live to and from everyone's phone. See Walkthrough: Share the calendar with your care team. Available
- They also get the activity feed for that person, so everyone can keep up with what's been logged — including by each other.
If you shared with someone before Build 77, their invite still works exactly as it did — records flow out to them, but their own additions don't sync back — until you re-send it. See Walkthrough: Invite a co-caregiver for how.
For a step-by-step walkthrough, see Walkthrough: Invite a co-caregiver.
One neighbor worth knowing: shared Care task lists are their own, separate kind of sharing. A shared list is a to-do list — groceries, the school-form checklist — that lives in Care to-dos and syncs both ways for everyone on the list, and it has worked that way all along. Sharing a person's profile and sharing a task list are independent: you can do either without the other. See Shared Care task lists.
Removing access
You can take a co-caregiver's access back at any time. Open the invitees, tap their name, and revoke — or swipe their row in the list. Revoking one caregiver no longer affects anyone else — everyone else you've shared with keeps their access exactly as it was. Their app stops showing the shared person, and that local copy is cleared. CareHaven also keeps an eye on shared access and lets you know if an invitation is about to lapse.
From Build 78, taking someone's access away no longer takes them off the list. Their name stays where it was, marked Revoked with the date it happened, so months later you can still see who once had access and when you ended it. That row is the record of what you did — it doesn't give them anything. Available
If you decide to share with that person again, send a new invite the way you sent the first one. Re-inviting builds a completely fresh invitation rather than waking the old one back up, so you choose the sections and the permission again from scratch. Nothing you granted before is quietly restored. Available
If you're clearing out the whole app rather than one person's access, CareHaven turns sharing off first and holds the wipe until it can confirm that happened. If it can't confirm it, it tells you plainly and leaves the choice to you — try again, or wipe it anyway knowing what that means. See Resetting CareHaven completely.
Who has access
Main Menu -> Team -> Shared with -> Who has access. From Build 78, this screen answers one plain question: right now, who can open this person's records? Available
What makes it different from the list of invitations above it is where it looks. Who has access reads the sharing list from iCloud itself, not only from what this iPhone happens to have stored. That matters, because your own phone's record can be incomplete for perfectly ordinary reasons — you reinstalled CareHaven, or you set up a new iPhone, and the local notes about older invitations didn't come along even though the sharing itself did.
So the screen can show you access this iPhone has no record of. When that happens, it says exactly that — "CareHaven can't match this access on this iPhone" — because that is honestly all it knows. It isn't telling you someone got in. It's showing you everything iCloud reports and leaving the judgment where it belongs: with you, the person who knows who was invited.
If you find access you'd rather not keep, you can remove it right here. It's one person at a time, and CareHaven names that person in the confirmation before anything changes. Available
This is also the place to look after you revoke someone, if you want to see for yourself that it landed.
Seeing recent activity
When you share a person, you want a single place to glance at recent sync activity. CareHaven aggregates a co-caregiver activity feed across every person you share, so you can see what was logged, and when, in one newest-first list. Available
Main Menu → Team → Shared with. The co-caregiver activity view opens from the Profile access screen. Until sync is on and you have shared a profile, it simply tells you there is nothing to show yet. If a sync ever runs into trouble — a network hiccup, a lapsed invite — you'll see it right there on the Profile access screen instead of it failing quietly.
Visiting providers & care shifts
Some households are not just one or two family members — they have paid nurses, home health aides, therapists who come to the house, or a grandparent covering a week. CareHaven helps you track who is expected when, who actually showed up, and what they did.
Visiting Providers is one entry per regular provider — your Day RN, your weekend BCBA, and so on. Each entry holds:
- The provider's schedule, contact, agency name, and a billing code if that matters to you.
- Notes for the provider — the gate code, a dog warning, the current cue guide highlights — so a new face has what they need.
Care Shifts is the actual shift log: start, end, who was on, and what got covered. A shift is logged automatically when a Handoff is opened, or you can add one by hand when there wasn't a handoff. The log is handy for an agency billing audit, and for noticing patterns — like "our Friday aide consistently leaves before bath time."
Care Shifts record what already happened. To plan ahead — who's on duty tomorrow, who has the weekend — use the Coverage planner on the Schedule calendar: open the Schedule tab, tap the + menu in the calendar toolbar, and choose Coverage. Planned shifts show on the calendar for everyone you share with, claiming an open slot is one tap on the phone that keeps the record, and the calendar points out gaps before they happen. See the coverage planning details in Appointments & calendar.
Tip: Hand the Visiting Providers list to a substitute caregiver. A one-page printout of who-shows-up-when is the fastest possible onboarding.
How edits are reconciled
When the same record changes in two places, CareHaven keeps this simple and predictable: the most recent edit wins.
This matters in three places:
- Across your own devices. If you edit a medication detail on your iPhone and change it again on your iPad a moment later, the later change is the one that sticks. You never end up with two conflicting copies.
- Across your care team. From Build 77, this same rule settles the rare case where you and a co-caregiver edit the same detail at nearly the same moment — the later edit wins, and if a change was overwritten, it shows up in Recent Sync Activity (Main Menu → Team → Shared with) so nothing quietly vanishes. Available
- With your calendar. Calendar sync is the exception to this rule. CareHaven appointments mirror out to your chosen calendars automatically, but events or changes from outside come in only when you review them under Review events to add — CareHaven does not silently overwrite your appointments. See Appointments & calendar for how that review flow works.
For things that only ever get added, like a feeding, a behavior note, or a logged seizure, there is nothing to collide over. Each entry stands on its own, so logs simply add up. The most-recent-edit rule only matters for details that can be edited in place, like a goal or a medication.
What stays private to you
A few things are personal by design and never travel to a co-caregiver, even on a shared person:
- Share the Load is your own private list of the mental load you are carrying. It syncs across your own devices, but it never appears on a co-caregiver's device. See Caregiver tools (for you).
- Your own Caregiver tools (for you), like your wellbeing self-check, are for you.
A note on what ships today
Syncing across your own devices, inviting a co-caregiver to a person, and the activity feed all work in the current beta. From Build 77, sharing is two-way for invites accepted on Build 77 or later: anyone with edit permission can add to the record, and it flows to the rest of the team — typically within seconds when everyone's online. Invites accepted on Build 76 or earlier keep working one-way (receive-only) until you re-send them. Available
If a co-caregiver's phone has been offline for a while, or you're waiting on a re-sent invite to land, treat the in-person handoff as your backstop. See Known limitations & what's coming.
Privacy notes
- Sync is optional and off by default. With sync off, all your care data stays only on your device.
- There's no CareHaven account to make. Today, sharing rides on your own private iCloud, protected by Apple's encryption in transit and at rest, and reachable only by the people you specifically invite — CareHaven cannot read it.
- Your records are protected by Apple's CloudKit encryption in transit and at rest, and by your device's own encryption when stored locally.
- Co-caregiving is shared per person. You decide who is invited to each profile, and you can revoke at any time — revoking one caregiver never touches anyone else's access. From Build 77, a co-caregiver with edit permission has their additions sync back to you and the rest of the team; a view-only co-caregiver is genuinely restricted to viewing, enforced on their device and in Apple's private sharing, not just in CareHaven's own interface. Available
- From Build 78, Who has access reads the sharing list from iCloud itself rather than only from what this iPhone has stored, so you can see — and remove — access even when this phone holds no local record of it. Revoking someone leaves their name on the list marked Revoked with the date, as a record of what happened. Available
To see exactly what is on your device and what is shared, open Privacy at a Glance in Settings. It shows a live count of your profiles and events, your encryption status, your sync status, and any active caregiver invites. More in Privacy & security (in depth).