Caring for a parent: their documents on your phone

What to gather

Most of it arrives on paper, one letter at a time. Start with the things a front desk asks for.

• Insurance cards, front and back
• The current list of medicines and doses
• Letters from specialists, with dates
• Account numbers for the pharmacy, the clinic portal, the utility bills you pay for them
• A copy of any document that lets you act for them, if you have one

Ask each office what it needs on file before it will discuss your parent with you, and keep a copy of whatever form they signed.

Set it up once

1. Make a stack in their name. Sub-stacks for insurance, health and bills keep the front desk moment quick. Stacks and sub-stacks keep your vault organized.
2. Scan the paper. Sealed scans with Apple’s own document scanner, which finds the edges of the page, straightens it and captures several pages in a row, and Sealed turns the pages into one PDF in your vault. A scan is written to a temporary PDF that Sealed imports into the vault and then deletes.
3. Put numbers in records. A member number in a record can be read off the screen without opening a photo of the card. A custom record takes any fields you name, such as plan, member number and group. Records keep logins, 2FA codes, credit cards, bank accounts, IDs and passports, Wi-Fi networks, recovery codes, license keys, contacts and custom fields. In a record, sensitive fields such as a document number stay masked until you tap Reveal Values and confirm with Face ID or your device passcode, and they mask themselves again after 30 seconds.
4. Keep the medicine list as a note. It changes every few months, and a note is easy to edit. Secure notes are sealed like everything else in the vault.
5. Keep portal logins as records, with their two-factor codes if the portal uses an authenticator. Records keep logins, 2FA codes, credit cards, bank accounts, IDs and passports, Wi-Fi networks, recovery codes, license keys, contacts and custom fields. 2FA codes stay live in the vault and are ready to copy.

Documents, notes and records are part of the paid plan. On the free plan you can add photos. Videos, documents, notes and records need Sealed Pro.

At the front desk

Open the vault, open the stack, show the card or read the number. Close the vault when you put the phone away. Sealed locks as soon as you leave it unless you choose a delay, and it covers its contents in the app switcher.

If the receptionist wants to take the phone to copy something, show them the one scan instead: the showing one photo page has the trick for that.

Sharing with a sibling

Caring is rarely one person’s job.

1. Open the item and choose Share Encrypted. To make an encrypted share, you open the item, choose Share Encrypted… from its share menu, set a passphrase of 6 or more characters, and set any limits. You can send someone an encrypted copy of an item that opens in Sealed with a passphrase you choose, and creating one is part of Sealed Pro.
2. Choose a passphrase and send it by a different route. Sealed tells you to send the passphrase a different way from the file: in person, or through another app.
3. Set it to expire, if it is a one-time look. An encrypted share can end after an hour, a day, 7 days or 30 days, and the receiving phone removes the item when it expires. Expiring and view-only shares are part of Sealed Pro.

Your sibling needs the app to open it. The person who receives a share needs Sealed and the passphrase, with no account and no server. The shares page explains the limits.

Don’t let the phone be the only copy

• Turn on backup. The first time you save your recovery key, Sealed also turns on iCloud Backup, which is free. Encrypted iCloud backup is free.
• Think about who can reach it if you can’t. The emergency access page covers recovery key guardians and printed keys.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps keep a parent’s papers together, behind a passcode, readable at a desk. In a record, sensitive fields such as a document number stay masked until you tap Reveal Values and confirm with Face ID or your device passcode, and they mask themselves again after 30 seconds. Sealed has a passcode of its own, a gate inside the app that is separate from your iPhone passcode.

It helps hand a copy to family without email attachments. You can send someone an encrypted copy of an item that opens in Sealed with a passphrase you choose, and creating one is part of Sealed Pro.

It doesn’t replace the originals or any formal document. Sealed is a private photo vault for the photos, videos and documents you’d rather not keep in your camera roll.

It doesn’t let your sibling open shares without the app. The person who receives a share needs Sealed and the passphrase, with no account and no server.

It doesn’t hold documents on the free plan. On the free plan you can add photos. Videos, documents, notes and records need Sealed Pro.