Independent Vet app help

Independent Vet

Find locally owned, independent vets near you

Coming soon to Google Play

QR code for independentvet.com/get — Scan with your phone’s camera to get the app

The Independent Vet app is the independentvet.com map of locally owned, independent veterinary practices on your phone, with tools for looking after your pets. It is for iPhone and Android, and it is free.

What the app does

Find an independent vet. Browse the same map as independentvet.com, search by practice name, city, ZIP code or postcode, and filter by services such as emergency, 24/7, urgent care, specialty and exotics. Each practice shows how it is classified and, when available, who owns it and the evidence behind its verification. Call, get directions or open the practice’s website from its page.
My Vets and Emergency. Save your primary vet, your emergency hospital and other practices you trust, and get an alert if a saved practice is acquired or its ownership changes. The Emergency screen shows the nearest 24/7 independent hospitals, ASPCA Animal Poison Control and a card for each pet to show the care team. My Vets and Emergency keep working offline with the last data you downloaded.
Pets and records. Keep a profile for each pet, scan vaccination certificates, invoices and other records with the camera, track vaccinations, search the text of your records, and export them as a PDF for a new vet or an emergency hospital. You can lock pet records with Face ID on iPhone, or with your fingerprint, face or screen lock on Android.
Medications. Scan a medication label or enter it by hand, get dose reminders, mark doses as given from the notification, and see when a refill is coming up.

Verification is about ownership, not a medical-quality endorsement. It’s always reasonable to ask a practice directly about its ownership. The app doesn’t diagnose or give medical advice; always ask your vet about your pet’s health.

If a listing looks wrong, use Report issue on the practice’s page. To suggest a practice that’s missing, use Add a practice.

Getting started

Everything works without an account. Your pets, records and medications are stored on your phone, and scans are read on your phone too.

Open the map. The app asks for your location only when you tap Show my location. It’s used on your phone to center the map and measure distances, and it isn’t stored or shared.
Save your vets. Tap the star on a practice to add it to My Vets. You can mark a saved practice as your primary vet or your emergency vet.
Set My area in Profile to hear about newly verified or newly listed independent practices near you.
Add a pet in Pets, then choose Scan a record. The text is read on your phone and the details are filled in for you to check. The camera is used only when you scan.
Add a medication in Medications with Scan a label or Enter manually, then add a reminder time. The app asks to send notifications when you turn on a reminder.

Accounts and your recovery key

An account is optional. With one, My Vets, your home area and your alert settings follow you to other phones, and you can turn on encrypted sync for your pet records. To create one, go to Profile and sign in with Apple, with Google, or with a code sent to your email address.

Encrypted sync

When you turn on encrypted sync, your pets, records, scans and medications are encrypted on your phone before they’re uploaded. Only your devices and your recovery key can open them. We can’t read them.

Choose Create my recovery key.
Save the key. You can copy it, or save or share the recovery kit, a PDF with the key and a QR code of it, made on your phone. Keep it somewhere safe and private, like a password manager or a printed copy at home.
Type the last group of the key, the four characters after the last dash, to confirm you have it, then turn on sync.

When you need the recovery key

An iPhone or iPad signed in to the same iCloud Keychain opens your records automatically.
A new Android phone set up from your old one with your Google account opens them automatically.
Any other phone, including moving between iPhone and Android, needs the recovery key. Sign in, then type the key or scan the recovery kit’s QR code.

If you lose your recovery key

We can’t recover your recovery key. It’s created on your phone and never sent to us, and we can’t open your pet records without it. If you lose the key and no longer have a device that can open your records, your synced records can’t be recovered, by you or by us.

If you still have a phone with your records, you can start again from it: on the recovery key screen, choose I lost my recovery key. That erases the encrypted copy in your account, on every device, and uploads this phone’s records again with a new recovery key. Records that were only on your other devices are lost.

Moving between iPhone and Android

On the new phone, install the app and sign in the same way you did before: with Apple, with Google, or with the same email address. Sign in with Apple is available on Android too.
My Vets, your home area and your alert settings come back from your account.
To get your pet records, enter your recovery key or scan the recovery kit’s QR code. Moving between iPhone and Android always needs the recovery key.
Notification permission belongs to each phone, so you may need to allow notifications again on the new one.

Without an account, the app doesn’t move pet records between an iPhone and an Android phone. You can still export them as a PDF from Profile with Export all pet records.

Notifications

You choose which notifications you get in Profile, under Notifications.

Medication reminders ring at the dose time and let you mark a dose as given from the notification. Refill reminders and vaccines due reminders come ahead of time. All of them are scheduled on your phone, so they work offline.
Quiet hours hold other notifications until they end, but dose reminders still come through.
- On iPhone, a medication’s reminder can be marked Time-sensitive so doses come through a Focus.
- On Android, allow alarms and reminders for Independent Vet so doses ring on time. Without it, they can be up to 10 minutes late.
Ownership changes at My Vets alert you if a saved practice is acquired, reclassified or removed from the map. You can choose all saved vets, or only your primary and emergency vets, and switch alerts off for any practice. The app checks your saved practices in the background about every 12 hours.
New independent practices alert you to newly verified or newly listed practices in your home area. Set your home area in Profile first.

If notifications don’t arrive, check that they’re allowed for Independent Vet in your phone’s settings.

Deleting your data and your account

A pet, record or medication: delete it in the app. With encrypted sync on, it’s removed from your account too.
Everything on this phone: in Profile, open the privacy screen (What stays on this phone on iPhone, Privacy and data on Android) and choose Delete all data on this phone. It removes pets, records, scans, medications, My Vets, your area and settings from this phone and signs you out. Your account keeps its copy. Export your pet records first if you want a copy.
Your account: in Profile, go to Account, then Delete account. This deletes your account and everything stored in it, including your encrypted pet records, and can’t be undone. If you signed in more than a few minutes ago, the app asks you to sign in again first. Data on your phone stays unless you remove it too.
Without the app: see Delete your Independent Vet account.

Privacy

No analytics, advertising or tracking. The app section of our Privacy Policy explains exactly what stays on your phone, what an account stores, and how long it’s kept.

For practices

Let your clients know they can find you, and save you to My Vets, on the Independent Vet app. Download a “Find us on the Independent Vet app” poster for your waiting room or a card for your front desk, and print as many as you like. The QR code opens the App Store on an iPhone and Google Play on an Android phone.

Coming soon: put these up once the app is in the App Store and Google Play.

Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.

Contact

Email info@independentvet.com with questions about the app, problems or privacy requests. If you’re writing about your account, send it from the email address you sign in with.