Medications and reminders

Log your medications, set reminders, and see how consistently you’re taking them. Tended supports fixed weekday schedules, every N days/weeks schedules, multi-dose schedules, tapering plans, after-dose interval dosing, stock management, side effect logging, and injection site rotation.

Adding medications

Add medications in More › Tracking, then use Manage in the Medications row, or directly from the entry editor. If Manage is disabled, turn on Medications in that row first. Enter the name, dose, category, and type (pill, injection, topical, liquid, inhaler, drops, or other). Toggle “As needed (PRN)” for medications you only take when needed — these skip scheduling and adherence.

What you use it for

Open a saved medication and use Used for to add one or more of the conditions you already track in Tended. These tags record your own context, such as “taken for migraine.” They appear in medication management, Doctor Mode, and condition-filtered medication sections in Health Reports, but do not change reminders, prescriptions, or medical advice.

PRN medications

PRN medications are included in medication insights when they are logged in your journal. Use the journal medication picker to select the PRN medication on the day you take it, then add each dose you took from the journal editor. This adds the medication to your journal without creating an adherence record.

Insights priority

Each saved medication has an Insights priority setting in its medication editor. Automatic keeps Tended’s default behaviour: PRN, skipped, tapering, and strong medication signals stay prominent while stable scheduled medications are quieter. Always watch keeps a medication prominent in Insights. Keep quiet when stable treats it as part of your baseline unless it is skipped, tapering, or shows a strong signal.

Multi-dose schedules

If you take a medication more than once a day, tap “Add dose time” in the medication editor to add up to four daily dose times. Each dose gets its own reminder, pending card entry, and adherence record.

Schedule types

In the medication editor, choose the schedule type that matches how you take the medication:

• Days: fixed weekdays, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. • Repeat: repeating schedules such as every 10 days, every 14 days, every 2 weeks, or every 4 weeks. Choose a start date; Tended counts from that date. • After dose: interval dosing, such as “take again after at least 4 hours.” Tended schedules the next reminder after you log a dose.

Taking or skipping a due dose

Mark the specific dose as Taken or Skipped from the pending medication card, its notification, the Lock Screen, or Apple Watch. Tended updates that occurrence across your devices, so it should not keep reminding you about a dose you have already answered. Your next scheduled dose remains separate.

Logging in your journal

When creating a journal entry, tap the Medications section to select which medications you took that day. In the editor, each selected medication expands so you can add another dose, edit dose time, change quantity, or remove a dose without reopening the picker. You can also type freely in “Describe your day” and Tended will extract medication names automatically. If carry forward is enabled, yesterday’s medications are pre-filled.

When you mark a scheduled dose as Taken from a pending card or notification, Tended also adds that medication to the journal entry for that day, unless it is already listed.

Dose time and quantity

Each logged medication dose can have its own time and quantity. This supports cases like taking one tablet in the morning and two later, or taking the same PRN medication several times in a day. If an older entry did not have a dose time, Tended shows “time not set” rather than inventing a time. Journal and timeline medication chips show the name, dose, and quantity where that detail matters.

Responding to doses

Scheduled doses appear in the pending medications card at the top of your timeline, and as notifications on your Lock Screen. Mark each dose as Taken or Skip. Taken feeds adherence and adds the medication to that day’s journal Medications section. Long-press the Taken button for options to add a note (e.g. “took with food”) or report a side effect.

Reminders and follow-ups

Set reminders for each dose time. Tended sends a notification and shows a Live Activity on your Lock Screen with Taken and Skipped buttons. When you answer a dose, Tended updates the pending state so the same fixed-schedule dose should not keep nudging after it is already taken or skipped. Badge counts clear when you open the app.

Pending medications

Any doses you haven’t responded to appear in a card at the top of your journal timeline. This includes today’s doses and any missed from the past week. Tended refreshes these pending doses when the app becomes active, when the card appears, after medication schedule edits, and after you respond from the app or notification. A medication schedule is enough for the pending card to appear; you do not need to mark another medication as taken first. Each dose has Taken, Skip, and Dismiss without recording options, so you can catch up quickly without forcing every dose into your adherence stats. The card disappears once all doses are answered or dismissed.

Dismissing a dose

Use Dismiss without recording when a pending dose should not be counted as Taken or Skipped — for example, if a reminder was created for a day when that dose was not needed. Dismissed doses disappear from the pending card, are not counted in adherence, and are not recreated by the reminder backfill.

Correcting dose records

If you marked a scheduled dose as Taken or Skip by mistake, go to More › Tracking, use Manage in the Medications row, choose the medication, then find the dose in Recent activity. Swipe left on the dose and tap Undo to return it to pending, or Delete to remove that dose record from adherence.

From the Medications screen, Clear pending can dismiss all unanswered doses from the past week. This is useful after changing a schedule or when several old reminders no longer apply.

If the medication was added inside a journal entry instead, open that day’s entry, remove the medication from the Medications section, and save the entry.

Stock management

Enable stock management in the medication editor to keep count of remaining doses. Each time you mark a dose as taken, the count decreases. Set an alert threshold to know when you’re running low.

Prescription refill reminders

Open More › Tracking, use Manage in the Medications row, choose the medication, then use Supply › Prescription length. If Manage is disabled, turn on Medications in that row first. Pick 30, 60, or 90 days, or use Adjust days for a custom number.

When supply tracking is enabled, enter when it was last filled and how many days’ notice you need. Tended calculates when your supply runs out and sends a reminder when it’s time to request a refill.

When a refill is due, it appears on the pending medications card with a “Refilled” button. Tapping it resets the fill date to today and restores your stock count automatically.

Side effects

Long-press the Taken button and choose “Report side effect” to record any side effects for that specific dose. Side effects appear in your adherence history and are included in health reports.

Injection site rotation

For injectable medications, Tended tracks where you last injected and suggests the next site in rotation. When you mark an injection as taken, you’ll be asked to select the injection site. Your rotation history is visible in the medication editor.

Tapering and titration

If your doctor is gradually reducing (tapering) or increasing (titrating) a medication, tap “Set up taper or titration” in the medication editor. Choose the direction, add dose steps with durations, and set a start date. Tended adjusts your reminders and pending doses to show the correct dose for each step automatically.

Managing a taper

While a taper is active, the medication editor shows the plan you entered, its current step, and days remaining. Its controls change Tended’s record and reminders; they are not instructions to change what you take. Follow the plan from your prescriber and seek professional advice before pausing, advancing, extending, or stopping medication.

Interval dosing

For medications taken “every X hours” rather than at fixed times (like paracetamol or ibuprofen), choose “After dose” in the medication editor. Set the minimum interval between doses and optionally a daily maximum. Each time you take a dose, Tended schedules your next reminder automatically.

Quiet hours

For interval-dosed medications, you can set quiet hours (e.g. 11pm to 7am) to avoid overnight reminders. If your next dose falls during quiet hours, the reminder is pushed to the end of the quiet period. This is optional — some patients need overnight doses, so quiet hours are off by default.

Adherence

Your health reports include an adherence rate for each medication — the percentage of doses you marked as taken versus skipped. For multi-dose medications, each dose time is tracked separately. This is useful to share with your doctor.

Dose-aware insights

Medication insights and reports can summarise scheduled doses, journal-added doses, total quantities, dose timing patterns, and the highest number of doses logged in a day. Correlation surfaces use the most meaningful medication signal available, so a dose-specific row only appears when it adds useful context beyond the medication name.

Is it helping?

Open a medication and tap “Is it helping?” under Effectiveness to see a before-and-after comparison from when you started it. Tended compares your day rating, flare rate, energy, sleep, and how many activities you managed each day. If you added Used for tags, it also compares the related symptoms you logged and labels that context clearly. These are patterns in your entries, not proof that a medication caused a change. The start date is auto-detected from your journal but you can adjust it manually.