See a loved one's status with the contact check-in widget

What the contact check-in widget shows

The contact check-in widget is a small, glanceable tile you add to your home screen to keep an eye on someone who lives alone or spends time on their own. Instead of texting 'you okay?' and waiting, you see their current check-in status the moment you glance at your phone.

The tile speaks in colour and plain words. Green means all good and on track — they have checked in as expected. Amber means a check-in is due and the clock is running. Red means attention is needed, so it may be time to call. There is no jargon and nothing to interpret: the widget turns the question 'have I heard from them today?' into a single look.

Because the status you see is only as useful as it is current, every tile is stamped with an 'as of' time. The widget never pretends to be live: it refreshes when your app next syncs rather than second by second, so it tells you exactly how recent the status is instead of guessing. Two taps are built in — one to call the person directly, one to open their full check-in history — so the widget is not just a light on the wall but a starting point for doing something about what you see.

On iPhone and Android: sizes and where it lives

The contact check-in widget ships on both platforms, but each one follows its own home-screen conventions. On iPhone it comes in two sizes, Medium and Large, which you add from the home-screen widget gallery like any other widget. The larger size gives more room for the status, the 'as of' time and the tap targets; the medium size is a compact version for a tighter layout. There is no lock-screen version of the contact widget — it lives on your home screen.

On Android the contact widget is a separate, resizable widget rather than a set of fixed iPhone-style sizes. You drop it onto your home screen and stretch it to fit your layout. Android does not have a lock-screen widget, so, as on iPhone, the contact widget stays on the home screen.

One honest caveat about freshness: because the tile updates on a sync rather than in real time, an Android tile can lag behind the live status. That is why every tile carries its 'as of' stamp — so a slightly older reading is never mistaken for a live one. Adding the widget and watching a loved one's status does not require a paid plan; it is a free, read-only view of information you are already allowed to see as their emergency contact.

Watching more than one person

Plenty of people are keeping an eye on more than one person at once — two parents, a parent and an elderly aunt, or a friend who lives alone as well as a family member. The contact widget is built for that. When you watch several people, it surfaces the one who needs attention most: whoever is closest to a problem shows first, with a quiet '+N more in the app' so you know the others are accounted for without cluttering a small tile.

That ordering matters in the moment that counts. If three people are all green, the exact order does not change anything. But if one person's check-in has slipped into amber or red, you want to see that first, not scroll past two 'all good' tiles to find it. Putting the most urgent status at the top means the widget answers the only question that is actually urgent — 'is anyone not okay right now?' — before you have even opened the app.

For the full picture, a single tap opens I'm Alive, where you can see everyone you watch, their individual statuses and their check-in histories. The widget is the summary; the app is the detail.

How the widget works with alerts and emergencies

The contact widget is a glanceable complement to I'm Alive's alerts, not a replacement for them. You do not have to keep watching the tile: if the person you care about misses a scheduled check-in, the app still reaches out to you. On the free Check In plan a contact receives one alert a month by push and email if their person goes quiet; unlimited alerts, SMS escalation and up to ten emergency contacts come with a paid plan such as Stay Protected. The widget simply gives you a calm, always-on view in between those alerts, so a good day is visible at a glance and you are only pulled in when something changes.

Emergencies are handled with the same care that runs through the rest of the app. If the person triggers an SOS from their phone, the widget reports 'Emergency response in progress' and lets you tap straight through to the live response in the app. For safety, though, an emergency can never be started or cancelled from a widget: SOS always lives behind a deliberate hold-and-confirm step inside the app. The contact widget is strictly a reporter — it shows you what is happening and gets you into the app fast, but it never triggers, resolves or stands down an alert on its own.

Who it's for, privacy, and getting set up

The contact check-in widget is for the person on the other side of a check-in: the adult child of an ageing parent, the sibling who worries about a brother living alone, the friend who wants to know a housemate got home. It pairs naturally with the check-in widget, which is the one-tap tile the person living alone uses to say 'I'm OK' — many families run both, one on each home screen, so the everyday routine and the peace of mind sit side by side.

It is built to respect privacy. The widget shows a status, not a location: the daily check-in itself never shares where someone is, so watching a loved one's tile does not mean tracking them around town. The only time richer location comes into play is during an active SOS, where it is scoped to that emergency response inside the app.

Setting it up is straightforward. The person you care about installs I'm Alive, chooses their check-in routine and adds you as an emergency contact. Once you are connected, you add the 'Someone I watch' widget from your own home screen's widget gallery, pick the Medium or Large size on iPhone or drop the resizable widget on Android, and it begins showing their status at the next sync. From then on, keeping an eye on someone is as simple as glancing at your phone.