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LaneHelp on your phone

How LaneHelp works on a phone: the bottom buttons, adding it to your home screen, and what changes on small screens.

What this does

LaneHelp works in any phone browser with no installation. This page covers the phone layout and how to keep LaneHelp one tap away.

When to use it

Use it if you mostly use a phone, or you are helping someone set up their phone for quick access.

What you need

A phone with a web browser. An internet connection for live pages — see Offline and low-signal use for what works without one.

In this guide
Source and freshness notes appear inside each guide where they matter.

The phone layout

On a phone, five buttons stay along the bottom of the screen: Home, Index (the directory), Shelter, Paddle, and Map or Housing, plus Menu for everything else. Filters and map controls open as slide-up panels instead of sidebars. Try the phone half of the tour in Finding your way around.

Add LaneHelp to your home screen

  1. Open lanehelp.com in your browser

    Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android.

  2. Open the browser share or menu button

    On iPhone: the square-with-arrow share button. On Android: the three-dot menu.

  3. Choose “Add to Home Screen”

    LaneHelp gets its own icon and opens full-screen like an app.

No internet or very little?

  • Texting works on any phone with SMS — no data plan needed. See Using LaneHelp by text.
  • The Quick Help page is built to load fast and lists crisis lines and key addresses.
  • Printed Quick Sheets and handouts work with no phone at all. See Saving and sharing.

Common questions

Is the phone version missing anything?

No pages are missing. Some tools are arranged differently — for example, map layer controls become a slide-up sheet — but everything on the desktop site exists on the phone.

Does LaneHelp work on a very old or slow phone?

The website is kept lightweight, and the text-message option works on any phone that can send SMS, including phones with no internet at all.

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