A good day starts
with a clear roster.

01. Your first launch

Shift Life opens with a choice of work pattern. The current app interface is English and runs on iPhone with iOS 17 or later. You do not need an account.

1. Choose Nurse, Offshore worker or Maritime crew, then tap Continue.
2. Add a personal roster through Import roster → Choose file, or open Calendar → Add shift to start manually.
3. Check a few dates and times against your source roster before relying on the calendar.
4. Open Settings to choose your clock display, travel buffer, recovery time, reminders and widget preference.

02. Choose or change your work pattern

The work pattern changes the guidance you see. It does not fetch an employer’s roster, fill in unknown future duties or delete existing shifts when you change it.

Change your selection at Settings → Work pattern. A blank date remains unknown until you add information.

03. Add, inspect and edit a shift

1. Open Calendar and choose a date. Use the previous/next month controls, the month selector or Today to navigate.
2. Tap Add shift. Select Day shift, Night shift, Recovery, Day off, On call or Travel.
3. Set the full Starts and Ends dates and times. For an overnight shift, set the end date to the following day.
4. Choose the Work time zone. You can add an optional location note. For a day off, you can confirm that you will be ashore or at home.
5. Tap Save. Open that date to review the result. Tap an existing shift to edit it.

Text labels accompany shift colors. A night shift extending into the following date can appear on both days. To remove a saved shift, open its editor, choose Delete shift and confirm. Deletion cannot be undone inside the app.

04. Weekly repeats and 14/14 rotations

Repeat weekly

When creating a shift, enable Repeat weekly for 8 weeks if the same local start and end times repeat every week. Review the resulting dates. The repeat option is for creating a series, rather than a promise that future employer changes will be applied automatically.

14 work days / 14 days off

For a Day shift, the manual editor also offers 14 work days / 14 days off · 3 cycles. This creates 84 confirmed dates from your selected start date. Work hours must start and end on the same work-zone date. You may mark the rest days as confirmed ashore if that is accurate.

The two repeat options cannot be enabled together. The rotation option does not overwrite existing shifts; resolve any conflicts before creating it.

05. Work time zones and overnight shifts

Set a shift’s time zone to the place where its work clock applies. A location note such as “Ward A” does not set the time zone.

• Changing the work time zone in the editor keeps the displayed dates and clock times you entered. Review them before saving.
• If an entered time falls in a skipped or repeated daylight-saving hour, the app asks you to correct it instead of choosing an interpretation silently.
• Use explicit start and end dates for overnight shifts. An end clock earlier than the start clock needs the following end date.
• Imported date/time values use the device’s local date and clock context; a file’s location label does not assign a work time zone. Check imported shifts carefully when working across zones.

06. Import a personal roster

Go to Home → Import roster → Choose file and select a supported CSV, XLSX or PDF from Files. If a file is stored in a cloud provider, first make sure it can be opened locally.

The app reads the file before saving shifts. An unreadable or invalid import does not save a partial roster. Exact duplicate shifts are not added twice. A conflict with saved shifts opens an overwrite confirmation; cancelling keeps your existing calendar unchanged.

07. Find time for a personal plan

1. Open Plans → Add a plan and enter a title, such as “Coffee with a friend”.
2. Choose a duration from 15 minutes to 4 hours, a starting and ending date, and preferred start/end hours.
3. For offshore or maritime guidance, decide whether the plan requires being ashore. If so, first create a suitable Day off and enable Confirmed ashore / at home.
4. Tap Find available times. Review up to three suggestions and their basis.
5. Choose a suggestion and confirm it to save your plan. If your roster changes, open the plan to check it and use Find another time when needed.

What the suggestions account for

• Confirmed work and recovery periods block the corresponding time.
• Existing plans and your travel buffer reserve room around activities.
• Your after-night recovery setting reserves time after a night shift.
• Ashore-required plans must fit inside a confirmed ashore day off, including the travel buffer.
• Suggestions are searched in 15-minute increments, for a window up to 31 days beyond the selected start date. For a longer horizon, search in smaller date ranges.

Update Settings → Time preferences to adjust the travel buffer and after-night recovery hours. Always compare a suggested time with your real commitments before confirming.

08. Shift and plan reminders

1. Open Settings → Shift reminders.
2. Enable Shift reminders and allow notification permission when iOS asks.
3. Choose a lead time with Remind me. Enable Plan reminders separately if you want them, and choose their lead time.
4. Check iPhone Settings → Notifications → Shift Life for notification permission, alert destinations and sound settings.

Reminders are local notifications. They do not require a push-notification account on our servers. A reminder whose lead time has already passed is not scheduled retroactively.

Focus modes, Scheduled Summary, silent settings and iOS alert preferences can affect how you notice a notification. The app schedules a limited batch of upcoming reminders. Saving roster or plan changes, or changing reminder preferences, refreshes that batch. Recheck your upcoming reminders as dates approach. See the support checklist if an alert is missing.

09. Add the Home Screen widget

1. Open Shift Life and save some future shifts or days off.
2. In Settings → Home Screen widget, choose whether the ticket prioritizes Next shift or Next day off.
3. On the iPhone Home Screen, touch and hold an empty area, choose the option to add a widget, then search for Shift Life.
4. Choose the medium-sized widget and add it to your Home Screen.

The screen inside Shift Life is a preview of your saved roster. Adding a widget is a separate iOS Home Screen action. iOS controls widget refresh timing, so an update may not appear instantly. This is an iPhone Home Screen widget, not an Apple Watch app.

10. Local data, backups and deletion

Your shifts, plans and preferences are stored locally and shared with the app’s widget on the same iPhone. There is no account-based cloud sync or server recovery service in the current version.

Device backups may include app data depending on your Apple settings. A backup is separate from an in-app export or synchronization feature; do not assume an untested backup can restore every change.

1. To clear the app, open Settings → Privacy → Delete all personal data.
2. Read the confirmation and choose Delete all data only if you intend to reset the app.
3. The app clears its saved shifts, plans, preferences and local diagnostic log, refreshes its widget data and removes pending reminders through the app’s notification refresh.