How do I make an iPhone or iPad cheat sheet for an elderly parent?

Why a cheat sheet made from their own phone works

Printed iPhone guides for seniors exist, from books to one-page cheat sheets. They show a generic iPhone. Your parent’s phone has their wallpaper, their apps in their places and their text size. The closer the picture is to what they see, the less they have to translate.

It is also what people end up making by hand. A social worker asking on Reddit for an iPhone cheat sheet for an older client got this answer from someone who had done it for a relative: they “took screen shots, printed out pictures, circled relevant app/area and had arrows when appropriate”, wrote instructions for each picture, and “made a little book organized by general task”.

That is the right format. What follows makes it faster to build and easier to keep up to date.

Choose tasks, not features

Do not try to explain the whole phone. List the tasks your parent actually asks about, and make one short guide for each:

Task	Where it starts	They are finished when
Call a grandchild on FaceTime	Home Screen	Their face appears on the screen
Answer a video call	The incoming call screen	They can see the caller
Send a photo to the family group	Photos	The photo appears in the chat
Make the text bigger	Settings	The words on the screen are larger

Keep each guide to the steps that task needs. A four-page guide they finish is worth more than a twenty-page manual they put in a drawer.

Record the task on their iPhone

A screen recording captures every screen along the way, so you do not have to remember to take each screenshot.

1. Turn on Do Not Disturb, so a message or banner does not appear halfway through.
2. Open Control Center and tap the Screen Recording button (Apple’s instructions).
3. Do the task slowly. Pause for a second on each new screen.
4. Stop the recording. It is saved in Photos.

If you are not with them, they can record it while you talk them through it on another phone, and send you the recording.

Turn the recording into a printed guide

AirDrop or message the recording to your iPhone and import it into Walkthru. It cuts the recording into one screenshot per screen. Then, for each step:

• Delete the steps they do not need, such as a loading screen.
• Place a marker on the button. Tap, press-and-hold and swipe markers show what kind of touch it is. A swipe marker is useful for “swipe up from the bottom”.
• Write one instruction as the step’s title. Use the words printed on the button, and describe it if it has no words: “Tap the green button with the white phone”.
• Add a short label on the picture if they need a starting point, such as “Start here”.
• Cover anything private. Walkthru offers to redact phone numbers, email addresses and other details it finds; accept those and cover any message text yourself.

Export a PDF guide with the one step per page layout. It prints the largest screenshot and puts each step’s title above it in large bold type. Add a cover page with the task’s name, then print it from the share sheet.

A real page from a Walkthru PDF export of the site’s demo task. A printed cheat sheet uses the same layout.

For a quick answer instead of a printout, export Step images and send the pictures in Messages.

Write for the person who will read it

• One action per page. “Tap FaceTime” is one page. “Tap FaceTime, then pick Anna” is two.
• Say what they will see next. “You will hear it ringing” tells them it worked.
• Name the button, not just its colour. Colours look different in bright light and to older eyes. The word on the button stays the same.
• Tell them what to do if the screen looks different. “If you see something else, stop and call me” is a better last line than nothing.
• Put the task’s name in large type on the cover, so they can find the right guide in a folder.

Then test it. Hand it over, say nothing, and watch. Where they hesitate is the page to rewrite.

If your parent uses an iPad

Many older people prefer an iPad for the bigger screen. As one r/ipad poster put it, “an iPad is great to use basically as an iPhone with a big screen” (r/ipad). Everything above works the same way on an iPad, with a few differences to write down:

• Record on their iPad, from Control Center in the top-right corner, and import the recording into Walkthru on the iPad itself, or send it to your own device.
• Check for a Home button. On an iPad with a Home button, “press the Home button” takes them back to the start. On one without, it is “swipe up from the bottom edge”. Write the one their iPad uses.
• Record it the way they hold it. If the iPad lives upright in a stand, record it upright; if it sits sideways in a keyboard case, record it sideways. The PDF keeps each screenshot’s shape.
• Use the bigger screen for bigger pictures. One step per page makes an iPad screenshot large and readable on paper.

Apple’s Assistive Access for iPad works like the iPhone version, with larger buttons and fewer apps.

Add a page for fake virus warnings

One page belongs in every cheat sheet, and it is not a task. Scam pop-ups that claim the device is infected are a constant worry. In an r/AgingParents thread about tech support for seniors, one reply described “the number of alerts my mother shows me from her iPhone, telling her that the phone is infected” (r/AgingParents).

Make that page plain and firm: “If a message says your iPhone or iPad has a virus, or asks you to call a number, do not tap anything in it. Close it and call me.” Put your number on it.

Pair it with the other help that exists

A cheat sheet is not a lesson. Libraries, senior centres and Apple Stores run classes for learning the phone, and the Reddit thread above recommends them first. The cheat sheet is what stays by the phone afterwards.

If the phone itself is the obstacle, Apple’s Assistive Access gives the iPhone a simpler layout with larger buttons and fewer apps. Set it up before you record, because it changes what every screen looks like.

Keep it current

An iOS update can move a button. When a page stops matching the phone, record that task again, or replace the one screenshot that changed in the editable guide, and reprint that guide. Write the date on the cover, so you both know which copy is newest. See updating a guide after the screens change for the details.