Your rotation, on a calendar that understands it

An ordinary calendar app assumes a week. Yours does not repeat every seven days, so you end up counting forward on your fingers to answer a question as simple as whether you are free three Saturdays from now. BlueShifts holds the cycle instead of the week. Day shifts, nights and 24-hour tours each carry their own marker, and the months ahead are already filled in.

Firefighter shift calendar — 24/48, 48/96 and Kelly days

A 24-hour tour is the thing ordinary calendar apps get most wrong: they split it across two dates or flatten it into a day shift. Here it is its own state with its own marker, and the cycle walks through the week the way it really does. Kelly days sit on top of it, and 48/96 is the same engine with a longer tour.

The firefighter page 24/48 and 48/96 The Kelly schedule

Nurse schedule — three twelves, nights and bank shifts

Three twelves is only half the problem. The other half is what you pick up around it: a bank shift, an agency shift, a ward that asks on a Tuesday. The rotation fills the year in, and anything extra is logged against the hour and the rate, so at the end of the month you can see what you actually worked.

The nurse page Three on, three off Four on, four off

EMS and paramedic shift calendar

Most services run more than one pattern at once: 24-hour tours on the trucks, twelves on the cars, and somebody covering the overlap. You save the one you are on. If you move between them, you save both and the calendar shows which is which.

The EMS page 24/48 and 48/96 Four on, four off

Corrections and detention — the twelve-hour Pitman

The Pitman gives you a full weekend every other week, which is the whole point of it and the hardest part to keep in your head, because the fortnight never lines up with the week. Save it once and the free weekend is a date you can look at rather than a sum you keep redoing.

Corrections shifts The Pitman schedule 5-2, 5-3

Airport screening, ramp and airline crews

Airport rosters move. The days off are bid rather than given, split shifts put two work periods in one day with unpaid hours between them, and the roster changes with the season. The days you work are what a pattern can hold; a pattern you set yourself, and can change when the bid changes, is worth more here than a fixed template.

Screener pay by airport Air traffic control Five and two Every pattern

Plant, refinery and manufacturing crews

The long industrial cycles are where a phone calendar gives up entirely: four weeks before the pattern repeats, days flipping to nights halfway through, and a seven-day break that lands on a different part of the month every time. The app draws the whole cycle, days and nights marked apart.

The plant page The DuPont schedule Continental Southern swing

What it does besides the rotation

The hours you pick up around it. Bank, agency, overtime, a second contract at the weekend — log the shift, the hours, the rate and whether the money arrived, and the totals add themselves up. Anything unpaid stays visible until it is settled.

Sharing. Two people running the app link by scanning a QR code and see each other's shifts. Pay is never part of what gets shared.

Nothing leaves the phone. No account, no sign-in, no advertising, nothing collected about you.

Shared custody works the same way. Two parents alternating weeks is a repeating pattern like any other. Save it once and the calendar shows whose week it is, as far ahead as you want to look.

Written by a police officer, and that part switches off

BlueShifts was built by a serving officer, so the app ships with an off-duty side, a court category and police directories. If none of that is yours, it goes. The categories are renameable, recolourable and hideable; every field inside them is a toggle; and the icons along the bottom of the app are a list of checkboxes in Settings. Turn off what you do not need and there is nothing law-enforcement left on the screen — the rotation engine underneath does not care what you do for a living.

The categories

Hide a category and it disappears from the calendar and from the add-event form. Rename it and it is yours: Agency shifts, Bank, Second job, Overtime, Handover. Two of them stay put — Off Duty and Court cannot be deleted, because the app is built around them — but they can be hidden, which comes to the same thing if you never use them.

The fields inside them

When you build a category you choose what the form asks for. Turn off the ones that mean nothing to you and they disappear — try it below.

Leave Employer and Rate on and you have an hourly record of a second job. Turn the off-duty scheduler and the address auto-fill off and nothing on the form mentions policing at all. Skins, dark mode and 24-hour time live in the same Settings screen — how it looks is covered here.

Who is already using it this way

Questions

Is there a shift calendar app for nurses?

Yes. BlueShifts holds three twelves, four on four off, nights, and anything else you work, and it lets you log bank or agency shifts against the hours and the rate. Save the pattern once and it fills the year.

Does it do a 24/48 firefighter shift calendar?

Yes, and a 24-hour tour is its own shift type rather than a day shift stretched over two dates. 48/96, 24/72 and Kelly days are all supported.

Can it handle a rotation that is not on the list?

Yes. Every built-in pattern is a starting point and you can build your own of any length, marking each day as a day shift, a night, a 24-hour tour or a day off.

Do I have to be a police officer to use it?

No. The app was written by a serving officer and the police-facing parts - the off-duty side, the directories, the court category - can be hidden or renamed until nothing law-enforcement is left on screen.

Does it need an account or an internet connection?

No account, no sign-in and nothing uploaded. Your schedule stays on your phone unless you choose to share it with someone.