Drug Shortage Alerts

Find out your medicine is short before the pharmacy tells you.

com.ibrahimtxy.rxshortage · Medical

A drug shortage is invisible until you are at the counter and the answer is no. The FDA publishes the shortage list as open data every day, and nobody reads it on your behalf.

This app is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE and is not affiliated with the FDA. It reports what the FDA publishes about SUPPLY. It never suggests a substitute and must never be a reason to start, stop or change a medicine — talk to your prescriber or pharmacist. No account, no sign-in and no health record: the medicine name stays on your phone and is sent to the FDA's public endpoint as a search term.

What it does

Watch a medicine by generic name or by brand name
Choose the direction that matters to you: supply getting worse, coming back, or both
Every alert carries the manufacturer, the package it applies to and the FDA's own status wording
One typo in the source data — a record filed as “Unvailable” — is corrected so it cannot slip past your alert
No account, no health record: the name stays on your phone and goes to the FDA as a search term

How you set it up

You create one watch — for example “amphetamine, tell me when supply worsens” — and close the app. At the interval you choose it checks what the FDA publishes about the supply of a medicine; when the FDA changes what it publishes about supply your phone gets a notification. It never tells you about the same thing twice.

Who it is for

People on long-term medication, the family members who collect it, and pharmacy staff who get asked first.

What it does not do

It does NOT give medical advice, does not suggest substitutes and must never be a reason to start, stop or change a medicine. • It does NOT sign in, creates no health record and never asks for a prescription, an insurer or a diagnosis.
It asks for no account. No sign-up, no password.
It collects no personal data: no analytics, no crash reporting.
The free tier shows Google AdMob ads: a bottom banner, interstitial, rewarded, rewarded interstitial, app-open and a “Ad”-labelled card inside the list. Paid members see no ads and no ad request is made.

Permissions

Permission	Why
`ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE`	To avoid pointless attempts while offline, and to tell mobile data from Wi-Fi.
`INTERNET`	To reach the public FDA shortage list.
`POST_NOTIFICATIONS`	To tell you the published supply of your medicine changed. That is the whole app.
`READ_BASIC_PHONE_STATE`	So the ads library can tell Wi-Fi from mobile data. It grants no access to your phone number, IMEI or call log; the app does not declare it, the ads library adds it.
`RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED`	So your watches resume after the phone restarts.
`VIBRATE`	To vibrate when a notification arrives.
`WAKE_LOCK`	So the phone does not fall asleep in the middle of a check. The app does not ask for this itself; the background work library (Android Jetpack WorkManager) adds it.
`BILLING`	So you can buy a paid membership through Google Play. The app does not declare this permission itself; the Google Play Billing library adds it. Your payment details (card, address, invoice) never reach the app and are never seen or stored by it — Google Play takes the payment. All the app learns is whether your membership is active.
`AD_ID`	Ads in the free tier are served by Google AdMob, which may read the device advertising ID (AAID). The app does not declare this permission itself; the ads library adds it. Paid members make no ad request at all. You can reset or delete the ID in Settings › Google › Ads.

Source

Where the data comes from: the openFDA drug shortages endpoint at api.fda.gov, published by the FDA as open data. Notifications link to the official list on accessdata.fda.gov.

Drug Shortage Alerts is an independent app. It is not developed, endorsed or supported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.