Medication reminders are useful if you need to take your prescription medications at a scheduled time , but you can miss the notification all too easily. Here's how to set up reminders for follow-up medication appointments in iOS 17.
“The Medicines app lets you discreetly and conveniently keep track of your medications, vitamins, and supplements at any time,” said Dr. Symbol Ahmad Desai. Apple's VP of Health at WWDC 2022.
The Medicines app can remind you to take not only pills, but also sprays, creams, inhalers, liquid medications, and many other medications.
Taking your prescribed medications at the right times can be very important for your health. So if this describes you and you easily miss a notification when it comes, consider setting up follow-up reminders.
How to enable reminder notifications
Setting up a subscription Reminder notifications can be found similar to how you add new medications in the Health app. Here's how to find it and enable it.
- Log into the Health app
- Click Browse on the bottom tabs
- Find Medicines in the list of health categories
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- Click Options
- Enable Next Appointment Reminders
Setting reminders for follow-up medication appointments in iOS 17
Once enabled The Health app will notify you again — 30 minutes after the first reminder — if you have not registered any of your medications.
You can also enable this feature in iPadOS 17 in the new Health app.
How to turn on alerts for critical medications
While follow-up reminders are a useful way to receive repeat notifications when you need to take your medications, you may want a more direct alert for those who depend on your life. For any medications that fall into this category, you can turn on critical alerts.
However, to use this feature, you must have follow-up reminders turned on. Once you've done that, here's how to turn on critical alerts for all or individual medications.
- Go to the same settings menu you entered to turn on follow-up reminders
- Tap Critical Alerts > under the Follow Up Reminders toggle.
- Choose which medicationsyou want to receive critical alerts for
Critical alerts in iPadOS 17
The Health app will also require you to turn on critical alerts in your notification settings. However, this can be turned off at any time.
Once you enable this feature, subsequent reminders will appear on the lock screen and will be accompanied by sound.
Critical alerts will also pass through all focus modes and will still notify you if your device is muted.
Don’t forget to take your medications
Follow-up reminders and critical alerts are a great addition to the Medicines app to keep you on track with your prescription medications. If you're very busy or have a certain focus mode turned on that prevents you from receiving notifications, then these controls can be very useful to you.
Follow-up reminders and critical alerts are available in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10.
