ShiftChain
Manage alarms as routines
Only for iPhone
Free · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
Manage routines as a chain of alarms.
One alarm is never enough. There's the one that wakes you, the one that says
get in the shower, and the one that means leave now - and whenever your start
time moves, every one of them has to be set again.
ShiftChain sets them as a chain. Give it a routine - the steps before you leave
and the time you have to be there - and it schedules every alarm for every day,
without being asked.
TWO WAYS TO SAY WHEN
- Repeat days: a routine that runs Monday to Friday, or whichever weekdays you
pick. Chains are created two weeks ahead, no calendar needed.
- Calendar: if your days are already in iCloud, Google, Exchange or a subscribed
work calendar, tell ShiftChain which event titles mean which routine - "Early",
"Night ×", "AM Ward 4" - and it reads them from there. On a rotating roster,
this is the one for you.
SET IT UP ONCE
1. Create a routine: a name, a colour, a start time.
2. Say when it happens: repeat days, or keywords that match your calendar.
3. Give each place you leave from a travel time.
4. Build the steps before you leave - wake, shower, breakfast - each offset from
the one after it.
Leave = start time − travel time. Everything else falls out from there. A step
done on site, like stretching before class, counts back from Start instead, and
Leave comes forward to fit it. If your calendar carries exact times, switch on
"use calendar event start time" and ShiftChain takes them from the event.
HANDS-FREE SCHEDULING
There's no Activate button to forget. ShiftChain re-reads your calendar every
time you open it, scans up to 60 days ahead, and schedules whatever is missing.
When the calendar has moved since last time, it shows you which days changed,
which were cancelled, and which are new.
Rescheduling always sets the new alarms before cancelling the old ones, so a
failure halfway through can never leave you with no alarm at all. Every alarm is
checked back against iOS afterwards - a day reads "5/5" only once iOS has
confirmed all five.
REAL ALARMS, NOT NOTIFICATIONS
ShiftChain is built on Apple's AlarmKit, so these are alarms in the system
sense: they ring through silent mode and survive a reboot. Your Lock Screen
carries the whole chain for the day as a Live Activity - finished steps ticked
off, the live one marked NEXT or RINGING - so at 5am you can see what's coming
without unlocking anything. Same in the Dynamic Island.
PER-DAY CONTROL
- Swap the location for one day without touching its stored travel time
- Nudge a whole day, or a single step, earlier or later
- Silence one alarm and keep the rest of the chain
- Add a one-off alarm to any day, then keep it in the routine's steps if it sticks
- Two events matching the same day? Pick the real one inline
- Ignore titles that keep false-matching
- Assign a routine by hand, mark a day off, or revert a day to the calendar
BUILT FOR THE 4AM VERSION OF YOU
Colour-coded routines, so a week reads at a glance. Overnight starts that run
past midnight don't spawn a phantom day the next morning. Fly somewhere else and
every alarm re-resolves to local time. A guided tour on first launch, an in-app
help centre, and - when nothing matches - a diagnostics panel that tells you
exactly why: calendar access, how many events were found, and the titles it
actually saw.
WHY "SHIFTCHAIN"
It started with one shift worker. Her roster changed every week, it lived in
her calendar, and every change meant resetting a handful of alarms by hand. So
the app read the calendar and set the whole chain for her. Then she took a job
with regular hours, and the chain turned out to be the point: the same steps,
set once, run as one. Routines on repeat days came next. The name stayed.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No account. No server. No analytics. No ads. The app contains no network code at
all. ShiftChain reads your calendar on your device and never writes to it, and
nothing you enter ever leaves your iPhone.
REQUIRES
iOS 26 or later, for AlarmKit. iPhone only.
Ratings & Reviews
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Bug fixes
The developer, Monowai Pte. Ltd., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
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Information
- Seller
- Monowai Pte. Ltd.
- Size
- 2.9 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 26.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 26.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © Monowai Developments