Everything people ask about PillPal

Open PillPal, tap Add, and search the built-in library for the medicine, vitamin or supplement (or type your own name). Add an optional dosage, pick a colour, choose one or more times and the days they apply to, and save. The reminder is scheduled on your phone immediately; you will see it on the Today screen and, if you added the widget, on your home screen. Step-by-step guides with every screen: iPhone and Android.

The library holds over 300 common medicines, vitamins and supplements with short, general descriptions so you can recognise what you are adding. If yours is not there, type the name and PillPal saves it as a custom pill with exactly the same reminders.

Yes, as many as the pill needs. Each time you add becomes its own reminder with its own Taken, Snooze and Skip buttons, and each counts separately on the Today screen and the widget. A three-times-a-day antibiotic and a once-a-day vitamin sit in the same list without any special handling, and you can add or remove a time later without touching the rest.

Yes. Every pill has its own day selection: every day, weekdays, weekends, or a custom set you tap out. That covers weekday-only supplements, weekend-only routines and anything irregular, and each pill is independent, so one can run daily while another runs three days a week. A pill with no days selected is treated as every day. Weekday, weekend and shift-work schedules shows the common patterns.

On iPhone, PillPal marks dose reminders as time-sensitive, a category Apple lets through Focus and Do Not Disturb by default. They do not override the silent switch, so on a muted phone the reminder arrives without a sound. You can change the Focus behaviour per app in Settings under Notifications, and you can turn reminders off any time from PillPal's Settings. More on Focus and lock-screen reminders.

Every reminder carries three buttons. On iPhone, press and hold the notification (or swipe and tap View) and the buttons appear. Taken logs the dose and updates the widget, Snooze brings the reminder back in ten minutes, Skip records the dose as skipped so the streak logic knows you decided on purpose. How lock-screen reminders work.

You can, and for one pill at one time it often works. A Clock alarm rings even on a muted phone, and since iOS 26.2 an Urgent reminder in the Reminders app can ring like an alarm too. PillPal's time-sensitive notifications do not: they get through Focus but stay silent when the phone is muted. What an alarm or a to-do reminder does not keep is a dose history, so "did I take it this morning?" has no answer once the alert is gone. Apple Health's Medications feature, also built in, does log doses. PillPal puts Taken, Snooze and Skip on one notification, shows doses left on a widget and runs on Android. PillPal vs iPhone Reminders and alarms goes row by row, and PillPal vs Apple Health Medications covers the built-in log.

The dose stays pending on the Today screen and keeps counting on the widget until midnight, so nothing disappears quietly. You can mark it Taken or Skip from the app whenever you notice, and undo either if you tap the wrong one. Whether a missed dose should be taken late or skipped depends on the medicine, so ask your pharmacist rather than guessing. Why guessing is the wrong move.

Yes. Reminders are local notifications scheduled on the phone itself, not messages sent from a server, so they fire with the app closed, in airplane mode, and with no Wi-Fi or signal at all. The medication library is bundled in the app too, so even searching for a new pill works offline. On some Android phones, battery optimisation has to be set to Unrestricted for PillPal; the Android setup guide shows where.

No, and that is deliberate. A configurable snooze quietly stretches to an hour and then to tomorrow, which is exactly how doses go missing. Ten minutes is long enough to finish what you are doing and short enough that the dose still lands near its scheduled time. If a particular time never works, change the pill's schedule rather than snoozing every day.

On iPhone, press and hold the home screen, tap the plus button, search for PillPal, and pick the small or medium widget. It shows doses left, a gold progress ring and your streak, and updates the moment you tap Taken. What the widget shows, size by size.

A day counts when every scheduled dose was marked Taken. Days with nothing scheduled neither extend nor break it, and an unfinished today never breaks yesterday's streak. Skipped doses end the streak, which is the point: it is an honest record. It is also the feedback that keeps an easy-to-skip vitamin routine going.

Yes. The dose history keeps every taken and skipped dose for about 13 months, so you can look back at last week or last month and see exactly what happened and when. It is also the fastest way to spot a pattern, such as an evening dose that keeps slipping, and a weekly look together is the core of the caregiver setup. You can clear the history from Settings at any time; your pills and reminders stay.

Yes. The free tier includes every feature: time-sensitive reminders, Taken, Snooze and Skip from the lock screen, the home-screen widget, streaks, the dose history and the 300+ medication library, with room for three pills. An optional Premium subscription removes the three-pill limit and changes nothing else. Current pricing is shown inside the app and on the store listing.

Current pricing is shown inside the app and on the store listing, in your local currency, which is why it is not quoted here: prices vary by country and change over time. The yearly plan includes a free trial. Subscriptions renew automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the period, and you can cancel from your store account at any time. The terms of use cover renewals and refunds.

On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions, and cancel PillPal Premium. On Android, open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Payments and subscriptions. Cancelling stops the next renewal but keeps Premium working until the end of the period you already paid for, after which the app falls back to the free three-pill tier with your pills intact.

Open PillPal, go to Settings and tap Restore purchases; that re-checks your Apple or Google account and is enough in almost every case, especially after reinstalling or switching phones. Make sure you are signed in with the same store account you bought it with. If it still does not appear, email support with your store receipt and it will be sorted out.

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no login screen anywhere in PillPal, and it never asks for your name, email or phone number. The app identifies your device anonymously so that a Premium purchase can be restored if you reinstall, and that is the extent of it. Your pills, schedules and dose history stay on the phone. Apps such as Medisafe and MyTherapy use an account (optional in MyTherapy's case) for caregiver alerts, reports and sharing; PillPal leaves those features out, so nothing needs one.

On your device. Pills, schedules and the dose history never leave the phone. The medication library is built in, so searching it is offline too. Read the privacy policy for the full picture, including the anonymous analytics we use to improve the app.

PillPal runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 16.4 or later, which covers the iPhone 8 and newer, and on Android phones. The interface is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, and follows whichever language your phone is set to, so there is no language picker to hunt for. The home-screen widget is iOS-only for now.

No. PillPal is a reminder tool and nothing more. It never suggests what to take, how much, or when to change anything, and the medication library only describes in general terms what a medicine or supplement is, so you can confirm you picked the right one. Always follow your doctor's or pharmacist's instructions, and ask them before changing any part of a treatment.