BP Log + the Ten-Second Shortcut (Free Download)

Two ways to keep the same record, paper or phone. The point is the trend plus what you changed, because a number means little without the context of which lever you were testing that week. Feeds the Blood Pressure Toolkit - Pre-Visit Summary Template.

The printable log

Take two readings a minute apart, morning and evening, and write both. Note the one thing you changed that week (cut salt, added the walk, skipped the second drink) in the last column.

Four days from a filled sheet, so you can see what it is supposed to look like:

Three things in that grid are worth naming, because they are the reasons the sheet is built this way.

The second reading is almost always lower than the first. Look across any row. That is normal and it is why you take two: the first one catches you still settling, and a single reading taken once, in a hurry, is the least trustworthy number you can generate. It is also why the number from the clinic hallway tends to look worse than you are.

Evenings run higher than mornings. That is the pattern here and it is common. A sheet that only ever gets filled at one time of day quietly hides half the picture.

The drift is the point, not any single cell. Nothing dramatic happens between March 3 and March 6. A few points come off, unevenly, with the numbers still bouncing around day to day. That is what a lever actually looks like when it is working, and it is invisible from inside any one morning. Only the column shows it.

Each week's row on the printable ends with three quick tallies: the weekly average (systolic and diastolic), the lever tested, and the trend versus last week (up, down, or flat). Those three are what feed the pre-visit summary when an appointment comes.

Print it for the fridge. Page two of the download is a bare grid, two weeks to a page, with no teaching on it, so print that one as many times as you keep logging.

The Ten-Second Shortcut (iOS)

The same capture-now pattern as the asthma Ten-Second Log: one tap, auto-stamp, append. No app to open, no friction, so the log actually gets kept.

Paper has one real weakness here, and it is not effort. A sheet you have fallen behind on gets filled in from memory on the drive to the appointment, and a reconstructed number is not data. A reading you tap the moment the cuff beeps cannot be back-filled. The timestamp is what makes the log honest, and an honest sparse log beats a complete invented one every time.

Get it ready-made

Prefer to understand it, or bend it to your own situation? The full build is below, about ten minutes, once. Nothing here is held back either way.

Build it yourself (about ten minutes, once)

Do this first. Open Apple Notes and make one empty note called BP Log. Every reading lands there.

Open Shortcuts, tap +, name it Log BP. Then add these in order:

1. Current Date → Format Date. Date Format Custom, format string yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm.
2. Ask for Input, type Number, prompt "Systolic (top)" → Set Variable sbp.
3. Ask for Input, type Number, prompt "Diastolic (bottom)" → Set Variable dbp.
4. Ask for Input, type Number, prompt "Pulse" → Set Variable pulse.
5. Ask for Input, type Text, prompt "What changed?" → Set Variable note.
6. Text action, one line: [Formatted Date] · [sbp]/[dbp] · pulse [pulse] · [note]
7. Append to Note, pointed at your BP Log note. Then Show Notification → Logged [sbp]/[dbp] ✓.

The bracketed things in steps 6 and 7 are variables, not typing. Tap the variable bar above the keyboard to insert them. In step 6, Formatted Date is the output of the Format Date action in step 1, which the variable bar offers you directly, so there is no need to park it in a variable of its own.

That is the whole thing, and it is worth stopping there. If you want the finished version's one refinement, wrap step 6 in an If set to has any value on note: the If branch writes the line with the note on the end, the Otherwise branch writes the same line without it, and both set a variable the Append step uses. That is the only branch in the shipped shortcut. Skip it and an empty note just leaves a trailing separator, which is a cosmetic problem and nothing more.

What comes out:

2026-03-04 07:12 · 138/86 · pulse 72 · cut salt this week
2026-03-04 21:40 · 144/88 · pulse 68

Three things worth knowing about those lines.

• Keep the prompts short. iOS cuts the question off around twenty characters. "Systolic (top)" survives, "Systolic (the top number)?" does not.
• Custom date format, not Short. 2026-03-04 07:12 sorts and parses. 3/4/26, 7:12 AM does neither.
• 138/86, not 138,86. You are the one reading this log six months from now.

Pulse is asked for, the note is optional. The pulse costs you nothing while you are already looking at the display. The note is the field you will skip most days, which is why it is the only one the shortcut branches on. A reading with no note still beats no reading.

Make it instant

A log you have to hunt for is a log you skip. Put it one motion away:

• Home Screen icon, in Shortcuts tap the shortcut's options → Add to Home Screen.
• Back Tap, Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap → Double Tap → Log BP.
• Siri, say "Hey Siri, Log BP."

Best of all, put it where the cuff is. The reading and the tap should happen in the same thirty seconds, at the same table, or the gap between them is where the log dies.

Where this fits: use the Blood Pressure Toolkit - Home Measurement Card for correct technique before logging. Once a few weeks of rows have piled up, the weekly tallies at the bottom of the sheet feed the Blood Pressure Toolkit - Pre-Visit Summary Template.