Caregiving
A calm reminder app for helping a parent
One iPhone can hold your medicines and your mother's, side by side. What it can't do is watch her phone from yours.
Free with one medicine · No account · Nothing leaves your iPhone
Let's be straight about the shape of this, because getting it wrong wastes your money. Since version 1.2, Kounts Dose keeps a separate list of medicines for each person you look after on the same iPhone — yours, a parent's, a child's — with a switcher on Today, Medicines and History, an Everyone view, and reminders that name whose dose is due. What it has never had, and still doesn't, is anything across devices: no account, no shared pillbox, no dashboard showing you from another city whether your mother took her morning tablets, and no alert to you when she doesn't. So there are two situations it fits. One is the medicines you administer yourself, on your own phone, for someone in the same house. The other is a parent managing their own medication on their own iPhone, needing the routine clearer and calmer, with you helping to set it up. If what you actually need is remote visibility, an app built for it — Medisafe's Medfriends and family profiles, or a dedicated caregiving service — is the honest answer, and we'd rather point you there than take your money.
What actually goes wrong: Most caregiving software is built around surveillance, which is often both the wrong shape and unwelcome. A lot of older people don't want a monitored pillbox; they want their own phone to be less confusing.
Setting it up in Kounts Dose
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Decide whose phone it lives on
If you give the doses, put everyone on your phone: Settings → People, add them, and each gets their own list, colour and photo. If they manage their own medication, set it up on theirs instead — the two arrangements need different things, and mixing them leaves nobody sure which phone is the record. A second person is part of the one-time Dose Plus unlock.
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Set it up together, on their phone
Sit down once and add the medicines with them — the step-by-step wizard takes under a minute each, with offline name autocomplete for the spellings. Doing it together means they know how it works, which is what makes it stick after you've gone home.
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Turn up the text size
Dose follows the system text size throughout, so raising it in iOS Settings → Display & Brightness → Text Size makes the whole app bigger — not just some of it. It scales up to large accessibility sizes before the card layouts run out of room.
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Put a big widget on the Home Screen
The Today or Next dose widget means the answer to “have I taken my tablets?” is on the Home Screen, with a Take button right there. For a lot of people that removes the need to open an app at all — which is the single biggest usability win available here.
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Use critical alarms for the important ones
A phone left face-down in another room, on silent, defeats an ordinary reminder. Critical alarms ring through Silent mode and Focus, full-screen. They're free at every tier.
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Set supply so the reorder isn't a surprise
Enter what the pharmacy dispensed, and the app warns before it runs out. If you're the one who chases repeat prescriptions, ask them to tell you when the “running low” notice appears — a low-tech handoff that respects their independence.
Please read this part
Kounts Dose is not a safety system and must not be relied on as one. It does not alert a family member or carer if a dose is missed, does not monitor anyone remotely, and gives no medical advice or interaction checks. If someone's health depends on their medication being taken and verified, that needs a real care arrangement — a pharmacist's blister pack, a visiting carer, or a monitored service — not a reminder app on a phone.
Why it suits this routine
It's calm and it doesn't patronise
A quiet cream interface, one screen showing what's due, colour-coded medicines, no streaks, no adherence grade, no gamification. Software that treats an adult like an adult tends to actually get used, and that matters more than any feature list.
Genuine accessibility work
Full Dynamic Type support, a real VoiceOver pass (calendar days announce date and status, statuses are never conveyed by colour alone, custom controls are labelled), and every interactive element sized to at least a 44pt tap target. Those aren't checkboxes — they're what makes an app usable with shaky hands or poor eyesight.
No account to manage on their behalf
No sign-up, no password to reset, no email to verify, no subscription to lapse and lock them out. One $9.99 purchase, or free with a single medicine. For anyone who has fielded a 9pm call about a forgotten password, this is a feature.
Questions, answered
Can I see whether my mum took her medication?
Not from your phone, if she's tracking on hers. Kounts Dose has no accounts, no sharing and no caregiver dashboard, so there is nothing for you to log into — the history lives on her device and she can show you. If remote visibility is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have, use an app built for it, such as Medisafe with its Medfriends and family profiles. If you're the one giving the doses, keep her list on your own phone instead and you'll see everything, because it's all on the device in your hand.
Can I manage my own and my parent's medication in one app?
Yes, on one device. Each person gets their own list of medicines, and a switcher on Today, Medicines and History moves between one person and Everyone, where each row is tagged with whose it is. Reminders, critical alarms and refill nudges always cover everybody regardless of who's on screen, and say whose dose it is — “Mum · 500 mg · 8:00 AM”. Medicines can be moved between people and take their history with them, and an export can be scoped to one person for an appointment. Adding a second person needs the one-time Dose Plus unlock.
How many people can one iPhone track?
There's no fixed limit — add as many as you actually look after, each with a name, colour and optional photo. What doesn't change with more people is where the data lives: all of it on that one iPhone, with no account and nothing syncing to anyone else's device.
Is it usable for someone who isn't confident with phones?
That's the case it's best at. One screen shows what's due today; logging is a single tap, or a tap on a Home Screen widget without opening anything. Text scales with the system setting, VoiceOver is properly supported, and there's no account, no ads and no upsell popping up mid-task.
What if they have a dozen medicines?
Unlimited medicines come with the one-time $9.99 Dose Plus unlock, and Today groups them by time so a complicated regimen reads as a few blocks rather than a wall of items. Each gets its own colour and icon for recognition.
Does it work on an iPad?
Kounts Dose is designed for iPhone. It requires iOS 26 or later, so an older device that can't update won't run it — worth checking before you buy.
Never miss a dose. Never run out.
Free with one medicine, and a single $9.99 purchase for the rest — no subscription, no account, no ads.
See also: When Medisafe fits better · Alarms that can't be missed · Home Screen widgets