How it works
Session Extension works the same whether you use it on your own or with a therapist. A therapist’s plan just adds a path to follow. Here’s how the pieces fit, from the first time you open it to the next session.
Start with any tool
Every tool is open from the start: thought records, behavioral experiments, the activity record, values, sleep, activity planning, the safety plan, problem solving, and the two gratitude exercises. Each has its Learn pages, written from the research and with their sources, and its own report. Set reminders if they help, or don’t.
Today shows what’s next
Today holds what you planned or what’s been assigned for the day, your next session if you’ve set one, the check-in if it’s on, and a quiet way into each tool. Help now, with crisis lines for where you are, is always one tap away.
Add a plan from a therapist
A plan arrives one of three ways. In person, your therapist shows a QR code and you scan it with your phone’s camera or under Add. By email or text, you tap a link. On a call, your therapist reads a number and you type it under Add. Pasting a code works too, and spaces and dashes don’t matter.
See it before it’s saved
Before anything is saved, the app shows exactly what the plan is: the tools, the schedule, your therapist’s words or a short ready-made note, and who it says it’s from. You choose the reminders. They say only that you have something planned, unless you choose to have them say what it is.
Follow the path, at your own pace
A plan with steps shows on Today as a short path: what’s done, the step for now, and what opens next. A later step opens once the one before it is done a few times, or after a set number of weeks, and later steps can ask a little more. Nothing ever locks you out of a tool. You can change the schedule, skip a day, pause, or stop, and nothing tells your therapist.
Keep notes for therapy
Before a session, list what you want to talk about, most important first, with suggestions drawn from your own week that you can add with a tap. During it, tick things off as you cover them and jot notes. Afterward, write one thing to remember. It stays at the top of Today until next time, and anything you didn’t get to moves to the next list on its own.
Bring it to your session
Pick what to share: therapy notes, the plan and what you did, entries from any tool, check-ins over the weeks, and your questions. It becomes one page you can share as a PDF or show as a QR code your therapist scans in the room. The QR code never touches a server or an inbox.
When a link opens in your browser
Email systems sometimes change links, and a changed link opens a page on this site instead of the app. The page reads the plan from the link right in your browser, shows it, and offers a button to open it in Session Extension. When the plan fits one, it also shows the number code to type in. If you installed the app after tapping the link, go back to the email or message and open the link again.
What stays private
There are no accounts and no server of ours. What you write stays on your phone, or in your own iCloud or Google Drive if you turn on sync. Your therapist sees only what you choose to share, and we never see any of it. Privacy.