The iPhone app

What the phone is for

The iPhone app is not a viewer for the Mac. It is a register in its own right, and the Mac is one of the places it can sync with rather than the place it lives.

A phone that has never seen a Mac still works. It holds its own register, records machines as you walk a floor, and syncs to Starkive Cloud when you sign in. A phone paired to a Mac reads that Mac’s register instead. Which of the two you are on is decided in setup and shown at the top of Home, under your organisation’s name, so you are never guessing where the rows came from.

The app is built around five tabs: Home, Assets, Scan, Work and Compliance. Settings is the gear at the top of Home, because nobody opens Settings standing at a rack. The Mac’s words are still the vocabulary, but the shape is different: tabs rather than a sidebar, with Scan in the middle of the bar because it is the one thing only this device can do. On iOS 27 the system sets Scan apart at the end of the bar.

Home: what is asking for something

Home does not list the fleet. It lists what needs doing, because an overview that shows everything has not overviewed anything.

The masthead is your organisation’s name. Under it, one quiet line: how many assets, where the register lives (On this iPhone, Starkive Cloud, or the Mac’s name when paired), and whether it is current, like syncing or synced with a time. A phone that holds its own register is never called offline, because there is no network it is supposed to be on. The gear beside the name opens Settings.

Until setup is done, a Getting set up checklist sits near the top, and each row opens its own task. Below it, To do carries jobs, requests, compliance and rooms to sweep, and the job and request rows open the Work tab. All assets carries what the fleet cost and the warning counts, and Finish these lists new machines that still need a holder or a warranty date. See Home.

Assets: the register, one tap in

The tab lands on the list. It used to land on an index whose top row said Assets, and the register cost a tap on a menu named after it.

Assets, People, Consumables, Contracts and Vendors sit in a strip under the title. Assets is the default, and the others are one tap away. Tap any row to open it.

The list has Apple’s search bar, with All, Tag, Serial, Person and Site to narrow a search, plus Everything and Needs attention in a glass strip that matches the tab bar, each with its count. Swipe a row to verify it or check it out or in without opening it.

People, Consumables, Contracts and Vendors each have a + for adding one, on any phone that can record to the register. See Assets.

Scan: the tab only a phone has

Scan is the reason to have the app on a phone at all. It reads a QR code, a barcode, an NFC tag or a photographed serial, and does the right thing with each.

A code that names an asset this device holds stays on the viewfinder. The card goes up, the camera keeps running, and Verify is one tap away. That is the walk-round case: you are scanning machines that are already recorded, and closing the camera between each one would be the wrong shape for the job.

Everything else closes the screen first and goes through the scan path. A pairing code pairs, when there’s a Mac on your network. A tag that may simply be newer than the last sync gets a sync and a second look. A code that matches nothing opens intake, because a machine that has just come out of a box is not a failure.

Scan also offers a continuous sweep, which is a different job from scanning one thing: a walk-round that records every machine it sees without stopping at each one.

Adding a machine

Three ways in, on one sheet, because the right one depends on what you are holding.

1. Scan the asset tag

   The camera reads a barcode or a QR code. A barcode is usually a serial, so it seeds the serial field and is shown as settled. One of our own QR codes carries an asset tag, so it is offered as a suggestion rather than applied: you spend it on whichever field you meant.

2. Photograph the serial

   For a machine whose label is printed rather than barcoded. The text is read on the phone, and the intake screen asks rather than asserts: if the barcode and the printed text disagreed, you are shown both.

3. Enter it by hand

   No barcode, no label, or no camera. The machine still gets the next tag number when you save, and the serial is just a field you can fill. You need a serial, a make or a model to save.

Work: jobs and requests

One list for the work somebody has to do and the kit somebody has asked for, each with a number you can say across a room.

Jobs are numbered like JOB-0001 and requests like REQ-0001. Raise one on the spot with +, give a job to the team, a person or a device, then claim it, report it done, and have someone else check it. Done work keeps its number. See Work.

Compliance: its own tab

Which frameworks apply, how many evidence reports are ready, and the biggest gaps first.

Answer the scope questions once and the tab works out which frameworks apply. Tap a gap and it takes you to the field or step that fills it. The whole evidence pack can be shared from the phone. See Compliance.

A record, at a glance

The most important facts first, then the rest in cards, one scroll. A bar at the top jumps to any section.

A jump bar stays pinned at the top while you scroll, with a chip for each section. Under it, a glance card holds the four facts you check first: With (who has it), Where, Verified (and when it is next due) and Warranty. An empty one says so, like Unassigned or Never, rather than leaving a blank.

If your compliance scope is set and the asset is missing something your audit needs, a card above the glance says so, like 3 things for compliance, with one next step for each, like Verify, Confirm or Add. Following one never records anything by itself: it takes you to the field or step, or says where it is recorded, and nothing is saved until you do it.

Verify and Flag sit in a bar along the bottom, so they stay in reach while you scroll, and they work outside an edit session because an attestation is not a draft. Below the glance card come the sections. Each section is a card, and its empty fields fold into one Not recorded line, so you can see what is missing without reading every row.

Edit, or tapping a value, opens one form with every field. Nothing is written until you press Save, which counts your changes, like Save 3, and a form that ends in Cancel leaves no trace: an audit entry for a change that never happened is worse than no entry. Your own custom fields have a card of their own, and marking a machine Lost or Stolen asks whether to take it off book value.

History is at the bottom, out of the edit flow. It is a log, not a group of fields: nothing in it can be changed, and putting it among things that can invited somebody to try.

What the phone will not do

Some of this is deliberate and some of it is waiting. Both are worth knowing before you promise a customer.

• No network discovery. The phone cannot scan a subnet for machines. Bonjour finds things advertising on the current Wi-Fi and nothing else, which is a degraded subset rather than a feature.
• No automations. Custom fields are set up in Settings (the gear on Home), from scratch or from a template, and you can add a site or a stockroom right from the picker, but automations stay on the Mac.
• No full disposal record. That needs a method, a date, sanitisation evidence and often a witness, which is a desk job. The phone can mark a machine Decommissioned and photograph the certificate.

Sync, and what the phone holds

The phone syncs on foreground, on connection change, and after a scan that missed. There is no timer and no realtime doorbell.

An edit made at a rack is written locally and queued. The queue drains when the app comes forward, when the Mac connection changes, or when a scan misses and triggers a sync. The receipt under a saved change says whether it has arrived or is held, and asks the route rather than the network: if anything is still waiting for this asset, the edit has not arrived, whatever the signal looked like a moment ago.

A phone signed in to Starkive Cloud syncs the other record types too: people, sites, stockrooms, consumables, contracts, vendors and the audit trail. A phone paired to a Mac sends and receives those over the Mac’s network, when the Mac is in range.