NestHealth server

A private, self-hosted fever and medicine log for families.
Every parent's phone shares the same temperatures and doses, and nothing ever leaves your home.

Website · Documentation · Docker Hub · Support

When someone in the family is poorly, it's hard to remember who had what and when, especially at 3am and when two parents are taking turns. NestHealth keeps every temperature and every dose in one place, and shows at a glance when the next dose can be given.

This repository is the NestHealth server: a small, dependency-free Node.js program that stores your family's records in SQLite and serves both the API for the NestHealth iPhone app and a full web app that works in any browser.

_{The NestHealth iPhone app, connected to a NestHealth server.}

Contents

• Features
• Quick start
• Connecting the iPhone app
• The web app
• HTTPS and access away from home
• Notifications
• Configuration
• Backups and updating
• Security and privacy
• Running without Docker
• How it's built
• Licence

Features

Logging

• Temperatures in seconds, with − / + buttons, a slider or the keyboard: ear, mouth, armpit or forehead, in °C or °F.
• Medicines, doses and free-text notes (fluids, sleep, symptoms), each recorded with who logged it.
• Colour-coded readings, from normal through raised and fever to high fever.

Knowing when the next dose is allowed

• Each medicine has a minimum time between doses and a daily maximum, set by you from its label.
• Quick Dose: save each child's usual dose from their medicine's label, then log it with one tap.
• A warning if it's too soon for another dose, and a reminder when it can be given again.
• NestHealth never calculates doses. It only records what you enter.

Seeing the picture

• A family screen with everyone's latest reading and "next dose" countdowns.
• Temperature charts over 24 hours to 30 days, with doses marked.
• A day-by-day history for each person, a log for the whole family, and CSV export.

Sharing with the family

• An account for each parent or carer, managed by the admin, with temporary passwords for new accounts.
• Passkeys (Face ID, Touch ID or your screen lock) in the web app over HTTPS.
• Notifications through Web Push and webhooks: ntfy, Home Assistant, Node-RED, n8n, Discord or Slack.
• Profile photos, a settings passcode to keep little fingers out, and light and dark mode.

Quick start

You need an always-on computer with Docker: a home server, a NAS or a Raspberry Pi. The image is on Docker Hub for amd64 and arm64.

mkdir nesthealth && cd nesthealth
curl -O https://nesthealth.soam.uk/download/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d

Or, without a compose file:

docker run -d --name nesthealth --restart unless-stopped -p 8080:8080 \
  -e TZ=Europe/London -v nesthealth-data:/data hansford909/nesthealth-server

Then open http://<server-address>:8080 (for example http://192.168.1.20:8080) and create the first account. That account is the admin, who adds the rest of the family under Settings → Family Accounts.

It also runs in NAS apps such as Synology Container Manager and Portainer: use the image hansford909/nesthealth-server, port 8080, and a volume or folder mounted at /data. If you mount a folder, set PUID and PGID to the user and group that own it.

Unraid: install NestHealth from Community Applications (or add the template from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mahansford/nesthealth-server/main/unraid/nesthealth.xml). It stores data in /mnt/user/appdata/nesthealth and runs as 99:100.

git clone https://github.com/mahansford/nesthealth-server.git
cd nesthealth-server

docker compose up -d --build

Connecting the iPhone app

1. In NestHealth on iPhone, choose Share with the family. If you've been using Just this iPhone, go to Settings → Data → Connect to a Home Server instead, and your records can be copied across.
2. Enter the server's address including the port, such as http://192.168.1.20:8080, or its HTTPS address.
3. Sign in with your account.

The app works fully on its own too ("Just this iPhone"), with no server or account. The server is what lets several phones share the same records.

Instant alerts and passkeys inside the iPhone app rely on Apple keys that belong to the app, so they only work with the developer's own server.

The web app

Open the server's address in any browser to use NestHealth on a computer, an Android phone or a tablet. It has the same features as the iPhone app.

• iPhone and iPad: open it in Safari, then Share → Add to Home Screen. It opens full screen, like an app.
• Android: open it in Chrome, then ⋮ → Add to Home screen (or Install app).

HTTPS and access away from home

On your home network, plain http:// works for logging and syncing. HTTPS is needed for Web Push and passkeys, and a VPN or tunnel lets you use NestHealth away from home:

• Tailscale (easiest): tailscale serve --bg 8080 gives you https://<machine>.<tailnet>.ts.net on every device in your tailnet.
• A reverse proxy such as Caddy, Nginx Proxy Manager or Traefik, with a certificate for a domain you own.
• Cloudflare Tunnel. This makes the server reachable from the internet, so put Cloudflare Access in front of it.

Behind a proxy, set PUBLIC_URL to the HTTPS address people use so passkeys work.

Notifications

Set these up in the web app under Settings → Notifications, and choose which events to be told about.

Web Push works on iPhone (iOS 16.4 or later, from the Home Screen app), Android and desktop browsers over HTTPS. Webhooks can post in ntfy, Discord, Slack or JSON format. The JSON format looks like this:

{
  "event": "dose_given",
  "title": "Ella had Children's paracetamol",
  "message": "5 ml given at 14:05 by Mum.",
  "person": "Ella",
  "time": "2026-09-25T13:05:00.000Z",
  "data": {}
}

Configuration

Set these as environment variables (in the environment section of docker-compose.yml).

Backups and updating

Back up everything (records, photos and settings) to nesthealth-backup.tgz in the current folder:

docker run --rm -v nesthealth-data:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/nesthealth-backup.tgz -C /data .

Restore it into the volume with the server stopped:

docker compose down
docker run --rm -v nesthealth-data:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  sh -c "cd /data && tar xzf /backup/nesthealth-backup.tgz"
docker compose up -d

You can also export every record as a spreadsheet from Settings → Data → Export all records (CSV).

Update to the latest version. Your records live in the nesthealth-data volume, so they're kept:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

To stay on one version, use a tag such as hansford909/nesthealth-server:1.0 instead of latest. If you build from source, run git pull and then docker compose up -d --build.

Security and privacy

• Everything (records, photos and exports) requires signing in.
• Passwords are stored as scrypt hashes. Sessions are random tokens, stored hashed, that last 90 days from last use. The web app uses an HttpOnly, SameSite cookie with request-forgery protection.
• After 8 failed sign-ins for an account, or 30 from one address, sign-in is paused for 15 minutes.
• The server never contacts the developer. It only talks to the push services and webhooks you set up. There are no ads, analytics or tracking.
• Keep it on your home network or a VPN such as Tailscale rather than exposing it directly to the internet. If you do expose it, put an access layer such as Cloudflare Access in front.

See the privacy policy for the app as a whole.

Running without Docker

You need Node.js 22.13 or newer (24 is recommended). There's nothing to install.

git clone https://github.com/mahansford/nesthealth-server.git
cd nesthealth-server
node server.js

Records are stored in ./data. Set DATA_DIR to keep them somewhere else and PORT to change the port. To keep it running in the background, use your system's service manager (for example systemd or launchd).

How it's built

NestHealth has no dependencies: it uses only what comes with Node.js.

Support

• Documentation: nesthealth.soam.uk/docs, including troubleshooting
• Help with the app: nesthealth.soam.uk/support
• Bugs and ideas: open an issue

Licence

Copyright (C) 2026 M Hansford.

The NestHealth server and web app are free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. You can use, study, change and share them. If you modify them and let other people use your version over a network, you must offer those people your modified source code.

The licence doesn't cover the NestHealth name, icon or the iPhone app and its screenshots. Forks are welcome; please give them their own name and icon.

_{NestHealth is a logbook, not medical advice, and it doesn't calculate doses. Always follow your medicine's label, and speak to a pharmacist, your GP or NHS 111 if you're worried. In an emergency, call 999.}