I’m thinking about how best to use my geek powers to make life easier for my 89yo mother post-stroke. She gets easily confused these days, and if I leave her with a phone, she’s liable to randomly call someone to talk about something that either never happened or something that happened in 1982, but I’d still like for her to be able to get hold of me if she needs something. I’ve found a shortcut that should allow her to video call me with one tap, which I’ll look at triggering via a remote button.
Now I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can do that I haven’t yet considered-- does anyone have any other shortcuts they’ve found useful when supporting elderly relatives?
1 Like
My suggestions (many are not at all related to automation)
- Cut the fat, i.e. uninstall all and every app that she won’t need; and those that can’t be removed, put them within the Hidden Apps (long tap then Require Face ID); do the same for irrelevant actions in the control centre, and additional keyboard
- Make use of Scriptable or WidgetSmith to put pictures of people instead of only names for dialing people
- Open every remaining app once so you go through onboarding, premium screens, authorizations, …
- Execute every shortcut at least once in case there are authorizations to go through
- Remove the Torch icon from lock screen (accidental enabling guaranteed)
- Disable background updates system wide
- Enable parental control for changing settings or downloading apps so she won’t accidentally break things or download junk
- If that’s your thing see if you can put an adblocker in her network like pihole and set her phone as client on it; alternatively just download Brave Browser and set as default
- Enable shortcuts automations to automatically re-enable Wifi or Cellular if they get accidentally disabled or when Airplane mode is enabled, or execute it at specific times during the day to be sure she eventually gets back online if she accidentally disables something
- If need be (older phone maybe) an automation to already enable power save at higher than the 20% threshold
- Make sure the phone saved the PIN code of the SIM card, else it will ask for it on next restart: Use a SIM PIN for your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support
- Your call: see if you want to enable/disable automatic updates (I prefer to disable, so it’s my little maintenance work when I come over and go through onboarding and authorization stuff myself)
- Have a look at the Accessibility options, try maybe the following: increase text size (not too much because not all apps comply properly), reduce transparency (especially for iOS 26), reduce animations
Those are random ideas but I hope some will help
3 Likes