Free Migraine diary for iPhone
One tap from the Lock Screen when an attack starts. True black while it lasts. And a clear report for the appointment months later, when your doctor asks how it’s been.
Aura on an iPhone: the Now screen, with the ring of the last thirty days and a large “I have a migraine” button.
When a migraine hits, the last thing you can face is a bright screen and a form. So Aura asks for one tap — and saves everything else for later, when you can think again.
Source: Steiner TJ et al. “Migraine remains second among the world’s causes of disability, and first among young women: findings from GBD2019.” J Headache Pain 2020;21:137.
How it works
When it starts, tap once on the Lock Screen, a widget, Control Center or the Action Button — or just say “Hey Siri, I have a migraine in Aura.” The clock starts, and a Live Activity keeps it on your Lock Screen.
While an attack runs, Aura switches to true black with one dim amber. No animation, big targets, and haptics instead of light. It isn’t a setting buried in a menu — it’s what the app does when you need it.
Ending an attack takes a deliberate press, so a pocket can’t do it for you. If it happens anyway, there’s a twelve-second undo. Try it:
When you’re through it, add as much or as little as you like: how bad it got, symptoms, aura, medicines, the warning signs before the pain and how long recovery took. A timed attack is already a record.
Ways in
Aura meets you wherever your hand already is. Every one of these starts the same clock — and every one of them works without opening the app.
Live Activity
Rate it in one tap, log your usual medicine in one tap, and say it’s over when it is. Drawn in the same black and amber as the app. Go on, press the numbers.
Dynamic Island
The timer lives up top while you use anything else. Tap it to open.
Siri
“Hey Siri, I have a migraine in Aura.”
Control Center
Action Button
Set it once. From then on, one press in the dark starts the clock.
Widgets
The ring
The first thing you see in Aura is your last thirty days: one mark per day, today at the top, coloured by the worst that day got. Start an attack, and the same ring becomes its clock.
For the appointment
“How many days a month?” “How long do they last?” “How often are you taking something?” Aura counts them the way headache specialists do, so the answers are ready before the question.
Acute medication, days this month
The line is the ICHD-3 medication-overuse threshold. Aura tells you when you’re getting close — “nothing to change on your own, just worth knowing.”
Figures from Aura’s example diary.
A clear PDF to share or print, for the last month, three months, six months, a year or exact dates — plus a CSV of every field if your clinic wants the raw diary.
What’s in the CSV?For clinicians
Aura is a diary, not a device. It counts days the way the classification does — and shows your patient where it drew every line.
Aura never diagnoses. When a diary crosses a threshold, the app says it’s “a conversation for your doctor, not a diagnosis from an app.” Attack records carry real start and end times, severity on a 0–10 scale, aura, symptoms, medicines with doses, prodrome and postdrome, and functional impact.
Honest insights
Most apps will happily tell you chocolate is your trigger. Aura only compares what it can compare properly — your attack days against your other days — and shows how sure it is. When there isn’t enough data, it says so.
An example diary. Each line is a 95% confidence interval. When it crosses 1×, Aura says there’s no clear signal — even if the number looks interesting.
Ticking “chocolate” on attack days can’t show chocolate causes attacks — and provocation studies have repeatedly failed to separate it from placebo.
Nothing here forecasts tomorrow. Anything that claims to is selling confidence it doesn’t have.
Aura counts days and shows patterns. What they mean is your doctor’s to say.
Every comparison shows its confidence interval, and says plainly when there isn’t one worth reading.
A look around
Plays well with others
Each attack is saved to the Health app as a Headache entry, with its real severity, start and end. If you choose, Aura also reads sleep and cycle days to compare with your attacks.
Tell Aura weather affects you and it records barometric pressure when you log, and can warn you before a big drop. If you don’t, no weather lookup ever happens.
Moving from another diary app? Import past attacks from its CSV export, and your first report already covers months, not days.
Private by design
“Your diary lives on your iPhone. If you lose it, there is no copy for us to hold — because there is no us.” — Aura, Settings › Privacy
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Gentle by default
A migraine diary shouldn’t nag you on your good days. Aura sends three kinds of notification at most — and each one can be switched off.
Your attack is saved. If you’re up to it, adding a couple of details makes your next appointment easier.
8 days on a triptan this month. The threshold is 10. Nothing to change on your own — just worth knowing.
About 9 hPa over the next day. You’ve told Aura weather affects you — this is just a heads-up, not a forecast of an attack.
Questions
Something else? The support page has troubleshooting for widgets, Siri, Health and more.
Yes. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, and no “premium” tier holding your own records hostage. Exporting and deleting are free, always.
Only on your iPhone. Aura has no account and no server, so nothing is uploaded anywhere, and it doesn’t sync through iCloud. Attacks you choose to save to Apple Health are kept by the Health app. Like any app’s data, your diary is included in backups you make of your iPhone.
If you back up your iPhone, the diary comes back when you restore from that backup. If you don’t, there’s no copy anywhere else — which is the point. Exporting a CSV now and then is a good habit.
Every field of every attack: start and end, severity, kind, aura, symptoms, medicines and doses, warning signs, recovery, impact, notes and, if you turned it on, pressure. It opens in Numbers, Excel or Google Sheets.
No, and it won’t pretend to. It compares attack days with your other days for sleep, pressure and cycle timing — the only things it knows about on good days too — and shows how certain each comparison is.
Any iPhone that runs iOS 26. The Action Button and the Dynamic Island only appear on iPhones that have them — everywhere else, the Lock Screen, widgets, Control Center and Siri do the same job.
No. Aura is a diary. It doesn’t diagnose, predict or recommend treatment. If a headache is sudden and severe, the worst of your life, or comes with fever, a stiff neck, confusion, weakness or a seizure, get emergency help immediately.
Set it up on a good day. Aura will be there, dark and quiet, on a bad one.
Free · iPhone · iOS 26 · No in-app purchases
