Set up your home medicine cabinet in HealthLab: a full guide
The medicine cabinet in HealthLab is a dedicated section for everything you keep at home — prescription drugs, vitamins, first-aid supplies. Setting it up takes about 10 minutes: create the cabinet, add your first items either manually or by photographing the package, and turn on expiration alerts so you stop finding expired medicine exactly when you need it. Basic tracking is free; photo-add and the weekly digest require Pro.
A paper list or plain memory stops scaling once a cabinet accumulates a dozen items from more than one family member — a leftover pediatric syrup, a couple of antibiotic courses kept “just in case,” vitamins bought and forgotten in the back of a shelf. What a cabinet in HealthLab does is track exactly the detail people tend to skip — the date a medicine stops being reliable — and surface it ahead of time instead of at the moment the medicine is actually needed.
The rest of this guide walks through creating the cabinet, adding the first items two different ways, organizing them by location and tag, confirming the expiry alerts, and putting the refill list and the weekly digest to use.
What you can do, and where
| What you want to do | Where in the app | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Add an item manually (name, dose, expiry date, location) | Cabinet → add an item | Free |
| Add an item by photographing the package | Cabinet → add an item → camera (Gemini Vision) | Pro |
| Get alerts before an item expires | Cabinet → reminder settings | Free |
| Organize items by location and tags | Item detail → location / tags | Free |
| See what is expiring or already expired | Cabinet → Refill list | Free |
| Get a weekly overview of the cabinet as a push notification | Cabinet → Weekly digest | Pro |
Step 1: Create the cabinet (Free)
Open the medicine cabinet section in HealthLab. On first launch it prompts you to add your first item right away — there is no separate account or sign-up step. The cabinet is created locally on your device.
Step 2: Add your first item manually
Choose to add an item and fill in the item card: the medication name, dose, the expiration date printed on the package, and where it is stored. Manual entry is the baseline, unlimited way to build the cabinet (Free) — it works well when you only have a handful of items, or when photographing them is not convenient. You can edit the card later at any point, for example if you moved the item to a different shelf or mistyped the date the first time around.
Step 3: Add the rest by photographing the package (Pro)
Instead of typing each item, you can photograph the box directly. Photo add (Gemini Vision, Pro) reads the name and expiry date off the package for you, and you only need to confirm what it extracted. This is the faster path when you are filling the cabinet with a dozen items at once: instead of retyping every line from a package by hand, you photograph one item after another and confirm what was recognized. Checking the extracted value stays your responsibility either way, especially for the expiry date, which some packages print in a small or unusual format that is easy to misread even on a clear photo.
Step 4: Set locations and tags (Free)
Every item can carry a location — “kitchen”, “bathroom”, “travel kit” — and tags, for example by purpose or by family member if the cabinet is shared. Neither one changes the expiry alerts; they exist to make an item fast to find when you actually need it in a hurry, instead of searching through an entire shelf while a symptom is already underway. Locations and tags matter most once there effectively is more than one cabinet — a home one, a travel one, a summer-house one — and every item is tied to a specific place.
Step 5: Confirm the expiry alerts
HealthLab sends alerts 30, 14, and 3 days before an item’s expiration date, and this schedule is the same for every item in the cabinet (Free). Three checkpoints instead of one give you time to act early — replace or restock ahead of the deadline — and still catch it at the last moment if the earlier alerts were missed. If the app asks for notification permission during setup, confirm it right away — without it, alerts will not arrive, though the cabinet data itself stays intact and visible in the app either way.
Step 6: Check the weekly digest and the refill list
The refill list (Free) collects everything that is expiring soon or already expired — a ready checklist for your next pharmacy trip: open the app, scan the list, buy everything in one visit. The weekly digest (Pro) is the same overview, delivered as one regular notification instead of something you have to remember to open the app and check yourself.
Scenario: three packs of ibuprofen with three different expiry dates
Picture a cabinet with no tracking: three packs of ibuprofen bought at different times, two of them already expired since December. Nobody notices until February, the moment ibuprofen is actually needed — and by then every pack on hand has already expired, forcing an urgent pharmacy run instead of simply reaching into the cabinet for something already on hand. In HealthLab, each pack is its own item with its own expiration date. The system would have flagged the first expiring pack 30 days ahead of the deadline, and the refill list would have shown, well before it mattered, that no current pack was left in the house. The difference is not how much medicine is in the cabinet — it is whether anyone knew about the problem before it became urgent.
Edge cases
- The expiry date is worn off or illegible. Enter the closest date you can still make out — a worn label often still shows the month and year even when the exact day is gone — or fall back to the manufacture date plus the standard shelf life listed in the package insert. If you are unsure whether a medicine is still safe to use, a pharmacist’s judgment beats any visual guess.
- Notification permission was denied. The cabinet and its expiry dates still save and remain visible in the app, but push alerts will not arrive. You can turn notifications back on later from the iPhone notification settings for HealthLab, and every item you already entered — with its expiry date intact — will pick the alerts back up without re-entry.
Free vs. Pro
The cabinet itself, manual item entry, the 30/14/3-day expiry alerts, locations, tags, and the refill list are all included on the free tier with no limits, regardless of how many items the cabinet holds. Pro adds two layers of convenience on top: photo add (Gemini Vision) instead of typing each item, and the weekly digest instead of checking the refill list yourself. Neither Pro feature adds new data — both speed up the same entry and the same review that are already available manually on Free. In short — tracking is Free, automating the entry and the review is Pro.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to use the medicine cabinet in HealthLab?
No. HealthLab requires no registration, email, or login. Cabinet data is stored locally on your iPhone via SwiftData.
Is there a limit on how many items I can add for free?
No item-count limit exists — manual entry and cabinet tracking are unlimited on the free tier. Pro only changes how you add items (photo instead of typing) and adds the weekly digest.
Can I share the cabinet with my family?
Yes, through a separate feature: family cabinet sharing over your own private iCloud. It does not change the alerts or locations covered here — see the shared family medicine cabinet guide for invites and what family members can see.
Can I keep vitamins and supplements in the cabinet, not just prescription drugs?
Yes, the cabinet does not separate items by type. Vitamin D and B12 supplements, for example, also expire and belong here just as much as prescription medicine — see our guides on vitamin D levels and vitamin B12 and folate deficiency for the markers themselves.
Can anyone else see my medicine cabinet data?
No. You invite a family member, and your home medicine cabinet and refill list sync between your iPhones directly through private iCloud (Apple CloudKit Share). No HealthLab account, none of our servers — just your iCloud. It’s opt-in and you can turn it off anytime.
HealthLab: the cabinet as part of the full picture
The medicine cabinet in HealthLab sits alongside medication courses, lab results, and the Journal — one app, one place to track, instead of scattering the information across notes and memory. Setting up the first few items takes the same 10 minutes this guide started with: open the medicine cabinet page, add your first item, and turn on the expiry alerts.
Track your lab results in HealthLab
