Medpad guide — keep several medicines straight in this browser with no account: times and days per medicine, today’s doses one tap from taken or skipped, a 7 to 30 day adherence, optional browser reminders, not a medical device, no drug database, no AI

It started with “Medication tracking app recommendations” on r/disability

The post appeared on the r/disability subreddit under the title “Medication tracking app recommendations”. Someone living with a disability asked which app people use to keep several medicines straight — not one pill a day but a handful at different times, some only on weekdays, with a refill that comes round every few weeks — and the answers pointed at the usual apps. It is a fair question: the medicines are already on the shelf; what is missing is a list that says what is due now and remembers what was taken.

Look at that category and a pattern repeats. Toobits is English-only. Toolenza speaks German and English, but its Korean and Japanese pages answer with a 404. Doctiplus is English. MyTherapy sends you to the app store first. And the complaints people bring against medication apps are always the same ones: reminders that go silent after an update or a permission change, ads next to the pill list, an account before the first pill, screens that take longer to understand than the medicines do, and a wipe with no export. For someone who takes four things a day, that is a lot of setup and a lot of trust before a single dose is ticked.

Medpad is a different answer to that question. You write each medicine down with its times and its days, and “Today” lists the day’s doses in order so a tap marks one “Taken” — in the browser on this device, with no account, no medicine cap and no server. The UI is in Korean, English, Japanese and German. And it is honest about the one thing a browser cannot promise: a reminder from Medpad fires only while Medpad is open, so for a dose that must not be missed the alarm in your phone’s Clock app stays the primary reminder. Medpad is a schedule and a checklist, not a medical device; it has no drug database, no interaction or dose checking and no AI, and it gives no advice.

What Medpad does

“Today” is the top of the page: the day’s doses in time order, one blister-style row per dose with the medicine, its dose note and its time. A row reads “Later” before its time, “Now” once the time has come, and “Overdue” once the grace has run out — 60 minutes by default, 15, 30, 60 or 120 under “Counts as overdue after”. One tap on “Taken” marks it, one tap on “Skip” marks it skipped, and the row then shows “Taken” or “Skipped” with the moment you pressed, “marked 08:05”; “Undo” takes the mark back. When more than one dose is due at once, “Mark all 2 due as taken” marks them in one go. The line above the rows reads “1 taken · 0 skipped · 1 overdue · 2 to go” and changes with every tap. The ‹ and › arrows step to earlier days, where you can still fill in a forgotten mark, and to later days, which are read-only and show “Scheduled”; “Back to today” returns. A medicine added this afternoon has no morning dose today and no doses on earlier days, so nothing is ever counted against you for a time before the medicine existed.

“My medicines” is where the schedule is written. “Add a medicine” opens a form: a “Name”, a “Dose note (optional)” that is free text and never interpreted — “1 tablet · 500 mg · with food” is for you, not for the app —, “Times” with a time field and “Add time” for as many times a day as you need, or one of the presets “Once · 08:00”, “Twice · 08:00 · 20:00” and “Three times · 08:00 · 14:00 · 20:00”, then “Days” as seven toggles shown Monday first with the “Every day” and “Mon–Fri” shortcuts, a “Refill by (optional)” date and a “Note (optional)”. From a week before the refill date the medicine carries a “Refill soon” badge, from that day on “Refill due”; nothing counts your pills, the date is the whole mechanism. Every medicine has “Edit” and “Delete”. Delete asks first, and the dialog offers “Export JSON first”, because the medicine’s log entries go with it.

“Adherence” looks back over 7, 14 or 30 days. The percentage is taken divided by taken plus skipped plus missed, and it counts only doses whose time has come — the hint under the title says it: “A time still ahead counts against nobody.” Below it a strip shows one compartment per day, filled to the share taken, with a coral floor on any day a dose was missed, and then a bar per medicine under “By medicine”, so you can see that the evening dose is the one that slips. “Export CSV” writes the log as one row per marked dose — date, time, medicine, dose, status, marked_at — for a spreadsheet or for the appointment; unmarked doses are not rows.

“Reminders” is off by default. Turning on “Notify me in this browser at each dose time” makes the browser ask for permission, and the state is always written out — “Notifications allowed”, “Notifications are blocked in the browser settings”, “Turning this on makes the browser ask for permission” or “This browser cannot show notifications”. “Send a test” shows what a reminder looks like, and the line “Next reminder: 20:00 · Metformin” names the time and the medicines. The hint under the title is the one that matters: a browser reminder only fires while Medpad is open, in a tab or as the installed app; for a medicine that must not be missed, keep an alarm in your phone’s Clock app as the primary reminder. “Backup” at the bottom has “Export JSON”, which writes medicines, log and settings as one file, “Import JSON”, which replaces what is here after one confirm, and “Empty Medpad”, which wipes this device after a confirm that also offers “Export JSON first”.

Your first week, step by step

You do not need to enter every medicine on the first evening. Two are enough to see whether the checklist earns its place on the home screen; the rest can come in as their boxes come off the shelf.

• Open https://medpad.try-dabble.com and pick your language at the top. Whatever you choose, the medicine names and dose notes are your own words and are never translated.
• Under “My medicines” press “Add a medicine”. Type the name as it is printed on the box, put whatever helps in “Dose note (optional)”, and press “Twice · 08:00 · 20:00” — the preset fills the times, “Every day” is already the days. “Save medicine”.
• Add the second one with its own days: type a time in the field and press “Add time”, then tap the day toggles — the row runs Monday first — or press “Mon–Fri” for a weekday-only medicine. If the pack will run out, set “Refill by (optional)” to the date on the prescription.
• At the first dose time open “Today”. The row that was “Later” now reads “Now”; press “Taken” once you have taken it and the row turns “Taken” with “marked 08:05”. When two are due together, “Mark all 2 due as taken” does both.
• Know the three buttons. “Taken” is what happened; “Skip” is a decision you made — the row reads “Skipped” and adherence counts it as not taken, but it is not a slip; and “Undo” takes either back when your thumb landed wrong. A dose you neither took nor skipped turns “Overdue” on its own once the grace has run out.
• The morning you realise you never ticked last night, press ‹ once. Yesterday’s rows are still open; mark the dose “Taken” and adherence corrects itself. › goes forward too, but a later day is read-only and shows “Scheduled”; “Back to today” returns.
• If you want the browser to nudge you, turn on “Notify me in this browser at each dose time” under “Reminders”, let the browser ask, and press “Send a test” to see it. Then read the line under the title once and act on it: a reminder fires only while Medpad is open, so for a dose that must not be missed, set the alarm in your phone’s Clock app as well and treat Medpad as the checklist.
• Before you close the tab press “Export JSON” under “Backup”. The file holds the medicines, the log and the settings; it is the only copy that exists outside this browser, and “Import JSON” brings it back anywhere.

What it does not do, said plainly

No drug database. Medpad does not know what “Metformin” is; the name is the string you typed, and the dose note is a note. It looks nothing up, completes nothing and corrects nothing. No interaction or dose checking: it will never tell you that two medicines should not be taken together or that a number looks high, because it has no idea what the numbers mean — that is the job of your doctor or pharmacist, and the app says so on screen. No AI: nothing summarises, suggests or predicts. No advice: the app never tells you to take, skip, move or stop anything; “Skip” is your decision, recorded, not a recommendation.

No push server, which is the honest part about reminders. A Medpad reminder is a notification the open page shows at a dose time; there is no server of ours that could wake a closed browser, and the app will not pretend otherwise. If the tab is closed, the installed app is not running or the phone has put the browser to sleep, nothing fires — which is why the line under the title says to keep an alarm in your phone’s Clock app for a medicine that must not be missed. And it is not a medical device: it is a schedule and a checklist you keep by hand, and decisions about taking a medicine belong with your doctor or pharmacist.

What stays on the device, and the backup

Everything stays in the browser on this device: every medicine, every mark with the moment it was made, the grace, the reminder switch and the language. The app requests nothing but its own files, so adding a medicine or ticking a dose asks no server for anything, and once it has been opened it works offline as an installed PWA. There is no account, no login, no server of ours and no sync; nothing about your medicines leaves the device, and nobody can see your list unless they hold your unlocked phone or the file you exported. The amber band at the top says the same thing in one line.

That also means the backup is yours to keep. “Export JSON” under “Backup” writes one small file with the medicines, the log and the settings, and “Import JSON” in another browser or on a new phone restores it after one confirm, replacing what is there — the dialog offers “Export JSON first” in case something is already on that device. Clearing the browser’s site data removes the list, which is why the export exists. Deleting a medicine removes its log entries too, and “Empty Medpad” removes everything, both behind a confirm that offers the same export. A new version never locks anyone out and never wipes what was saved; an older backup file still loads.