Meet Standby — Your family's preparedness plan, only on this phone

Utilities

Standby

Your family's preparedness plan, only on this phone.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What Standby does

Standby is the offline preparedness binder for mixed-status families who are told, by the very organizations that help them, to keep their most sensitive records OUT of the cloud. It is free, needs no account, and never leaves your device.

If a parent is suddenly detained, the people stepping in to care for the kids often can't find anything: which child takes which medication, the pediatrician's number, the school and the insurance, where the birth certificates and A-numbers are, and — critically — who the parent already decided should be the standby guardian. In the gap, citizen children end up in foster care. As of early 2026, roughly 11,000 U.S.-citizen kids have had a parent detained, dozens have already been placed in foster care across multiple states, and 5.6 million citizen children live with an undocumented parent.

The legal-aid world has the right checklist — ILRC and CLINIC's Family Preparedness Plan — but it ships only as a fill-by-hand PDF packet. Apple Notes and Files default to iCloud, the one place this cohort is warned never to put this data. Nothing free, structured, printable, AND fully on-device existed for this surge. Standby is that thing.

What ships in v1:

— Per-child profile. One card per child: medications and doses, allergies, school and grade, insurance, doctors, and daily-routine notes the caregiver will need on day one. — Standby-guardian nomination record. The legally relevant fields a parent fills in ahead of time to name who should care for each child — reflecting new 2026 state laws (like California's Family Preparedness Plan Act) that let parents nominate a guardian and share custody rather than have it suspended on detention. — Document vault, on-device only. Photos and details of IDs, birth certificates, and A-numbers, stored in the app and never synced to any server. — Printable "If I'm Not Here" caregiver card. One tap produces a clean, formatted PDF a caregiver can hold in their hand — who to call, who the guardian is, where the documents are, and each child's essentials. — Completeness checklist. Mirrors the ILRC/CLINIC family preparedness plan so you can see, at a glance, what's done and what's still missing. — Face ID app lock. The whole binder stays behind your face or passcode.

No account, no ads, no cloud, no analytics. Built for parents in mixed-status families preparing a care plan in case of sudden detention — where offline-only isn't a limitation, it's the strongest privacy posture there is.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Per-child profiles — One card per child: meds, doses, allergies, school, insurance, doctors, daily routine
Guardian nomination — Pre-fill the legally relevant standby-guardian fields naming who cares for each child
Document vault — Photos and details of IDs, birth certs, A-numbers — stored only on this device
Caregiver card — One-tap printable 'If I'm Not Here' PDF for whoever steps in
Completeness checklist — Mirrors the ILRC/CLINIC family preparedness plan; shows what's done and missing
App lock — Face ID / passcode over the entire binder

Why we built it

When a parent in a mixed-status family is suddenly detained, caregivers can't locate the children's medications, school and insurance info, identity documents, or a signed standby-guardian nomination — and citizen kids end up in foster care. Legal aid ships only fill-by-hand PDFs; consumer note/file apps default to iC…

What makes it different

Standby is the only free, structured, printable, fully on-device family preparedness binder built for the mixed-status detention cohort. ILRC and CLINIC distribute only static fill-by-hand PDFs with no per-child profiles or live checklist; Apple Notes and Files default to iCloud sync this cohort is explicitly warned a…

Who it's for

Anyone who values a small, sharp, single-purpose tool that does one job well and stays out of the way.

In one line: Your family's preparedness plan, only on this phone.

Try it

See the Standby app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use Standby, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.