CareLink™ Connect US Reviews

For the first couple of months CareLink worked great. It was a tremendous help with monitoring our son’s numbers. But then CareLink disconnected from his pump a few weeks ago and we have never gotten it to work since. We have uninstalled/reinstalled multiple times. When we are able to get his phone reconnected to his pump for a time, it never seems to sync with this app so none of the data makes it to our phones, which makes CareLink pretty much worthless at that point.

There also is no version of CareLink for iPads. The nurses at my kids’ school have iPads and were excited to have CareLink so they could monitor my kids and not require them to miss class to check in with them. Needless to say we were all disappointed to realize CareLink isn’t compatible on an iPad.

I would think that a $4 billion per year medical device/technology company like Medtronic could do a little better with an app that is the MAJOR selling point of one of its newest pumps...

That it still doesn’t work with iOS 15.4. Does not have a widget. Does not work with a smartwatch.

Anyone who has bought a new phone or received a new 780g in the last 7 months is unable to use this simple app because Medtronic cannot manage to update it. CareLink is designed to do only two things: authenticate the user login and download data from the cloud. It could not be simpler to maintain, and yet Medtronic cannot manage it. Every other app I have that depends on a login continues to work through each iOS update, every app but this one. Medtronic, however, continues to market CareLink as a major selling point for and integral part of the functionality of the 780g. As one can easily see from the reviews here, this is misleading.

The company’s answer is to contact product support. Product support cannot fix CareLink nor provide a workaround. Product support cannot even tell you when or if it will be fixed. Medtronic customer service replies with this bromide knowing full well that product support can do nothing for you. Only an update can fix the problem. They say it’s complicated, but it isn’t. They have had nearly a year of beta testing + post-iOS release to adapt their simple app to iOS 15.4 and they have not done it.

This is not incompetence but negligence and mismanagement, which has been the story of all of Medtronic’s information technology products for many years.

Not sure what is happening with CareLink, but I have to continually reinstall it to see readings on my daughter, and I never get any alerts. CareLink freezes up to the point of just showing a black screen with no data, they only way I can see the data again is to delete and reinstall.
Since I have gotten the pump I have not received one alert to my phone, an iPhone 11. This is a huge problem when you are responsible for a little child’s well-being. I have been in contact with with the costumer service and they don’t understand what is happening either. They have told me it is an issue with CareLink , but there is no sign of when this problem will be fixed. Surely this isn’t something you can expect clients to just deal with??! Missing my dexcom app at this point, which is sad because we were so hopeful to help a child feel more independent and spend less time in the day concerned about diabetes.

My son has used the Dexcom app for several years. Medtronic didn’t have one at first, so we stopped using their CGM (for other reasons too). We were pleased to learn they did make an app, so we decided to try the setup again. WHERE ARE THE ALARMS??!! If my son’s sugar goes low in the middle of the night, a little notification ding will not wake anyone up! The main use of CareLink is to make sure WE know when things aren’t ok. Otherwise we could have the kid upload once a week and read reports. They knew parents wanted the warnings that the Dexcom app provided, so though they took the time to make an app, it’s pretty sad that they didn’t make CareLink actually useful. I certainly out hope they see all the similar reviews here and make the needed changes soon!!

As a parent of a child who sleeps thru pump alarms having an app that will push alarms to me at night is imperative! That one ding sound notification is not going to cut it. Please make an option for an alarm sound that REPEATS until silenced. We had this option using Nightscout app with the 670 and already on night 1 with the 770 and this app app we are missing that feature.
Also an option that will push notifications / alarms past the ringer off or do not disturb. I want to have my ringer off at night and still get those wake ups as needed. (Also something we used to have)
Looking forward to seeing how CareLink develops and crossing my fingers for positive changes that will help tired Type 1 parents get some sleep.

The main reason we switched to the 770G was so I could track my sons numbers, particularly overnight. CareLink is very glitchy and only seems to work about 50% of the time. CareLink itself cannot keep up with software updates so it becomes more of a hassle than it’s worth. Additionally, CareLink only works with Samsung or IPhone - so don’t get fooled into thinking the 770G is compatible with any phone, it’s not. We were given wrong info when purchasing this pump and now my son has to carry three devices for it to work as it should. And if he’s not on WiFi, it doesn’t work at all. We have been minimed users for 7 years - I’ve never been disappointed with their products until now.

CareLink is the most glitchy app ever. It should be the best thing for carers of type 1 diabetics but due to someone having done a shoddy job, instead what we have is an app that you have to delete and reinstall several times a day just to connect to the pump. In short, CareLink has given me a lot of grief. It is beyond ridiculous and unethical. Fix this issues soon!
Also, CareLink has deleted all its previous reviews as it only had a 2.5 rating before. Do not reply to me telling me to contact Medtronic as I already have and they are not taking responsibility for the glitches.

CareLink was great in the beginning but it recently stopped sending my phone alerts! If I don’t manually check CareLink I have no clue what my son’s BG is. I get this when I click on the alert icon
“Notifications are disabled. Tap settings to allow notifications “ When I tap it takes me to the Siri settings for CareLink with Zero options for notifications. Also there is no settings in notification and it does not appear in celular app refresh settings.

Also it has always lagged about 10 minutes from my sons actual info.

The ability to see all alerts and bolus and how much. This is super useful. The ability to get notification when action needs to be taken is great but I also want the ability to have my son's current blood sugar number naturally in front of me. I want it on my Apple watch face as a complication and I want to see the number on my home screen as a widget.

I currently have an iPhone 12 and am able to use but don’t like the idea that CareLink requires me to put a passcode on my phone. I just had to unlock my phone using iTunes because phone phone would not accept my passcode, which was right, so I had to go without knowing my child’s numbers while at work. I should have the right to choose to put a passcode on my phone or not. Not CareLink .

My hubby and I are loving CareLink. Waited for a long time to be able to see our son’s blood sugars on our phones. We are currently trialing this pump & sensor, so far so good. But we keep on losing connection, and the only way to get it back is to delete CareLink totally and reinstall. Other than that, amazing tech and peace of mind.

I absolutely love CareLink. It is such a comfort knowing that I can see how my child is doing at anytime of the day (or night)!

The one that that could make it better is if I had it on my Apple Watch.

CareLink is quite informative but most recently very glitchy. It takes approximately a minute to open app. It kicks me out within 30 seconds. If I attempt to prompt another view, it locks up and then kicked out. I’ve restarted my phone, but no better response. I use this to stay in touch with my 83 y/o mother’s diabetes and often walk her through actions on her 770g. The glitch problem is frustrating.

I will reiterate with so many others are saying… Does not work with my brand new iPhone 12. Was able to work on the iPhone 11 with iOS 14.2, but not the iPhone 12 with the same operating system. Once again overpromise and under delivery. Unfortunately, Medtronic has been an extreme let down in keeping up with much-needed technology, as well as listening to what customers want in order to keep them confident in their ability to manage their type one diabetes.

Very sad that I was convinced to upgrade to a new pump and now can’t even use it because CareLink doesn’t work with a iPhone 12! Hopefully others read this before upgrading to their newest pump with Bluetooth transmitter so the same problem doesn’t happen. Hopefully this is something they correct very soon because currently I’m wishing I would have just kept my 670G and considered another pump company and I have been with Medtronic for over 15 years.

Installed CareLink on my phone (iPhone 12) to monitor my daughter. It lets me view her data about 50% of the time and the other times it just sits there and spins around. My husband also has CareLink installed on his phone (iPhone 8) and he does not have this problem. I am also asked to login in multiple times to my account to view her data when CareLink does work.

My husband is t1d and I use CareLink to monitor his BG instead of pricking him several times a night, or that was the plan anyway. CareLink hasn’t worked in months and when it was “working” it would glitch and take 10-15 minutes to load. I have the iPhone 11Pro and it constantly says CareLink is t updated enough to even be supported by my phone. Who creates an app that doesn’t keep up with the phones and operating systems??? Terrible design flaw.

I have to fix the connection between my wife’s pump & my iphone every day. It’s awful even if we are on same network in our house.
The forced password / pin is some pinheaded idea. Pointless but if the user wants it that should be THEIR CHOICE not the creators. I’m sure they are selling our data anyway.
I look forward to the eventual fixes or a better product of a competitor.

There should be a support option on CareLink . Right now my “care team” isn’t able to access the info even though my info is going to my app fine. There’s no place for them to contact help or troubleshoot so I guess I’m just on my own until it hopefully fixes itself...

I love CareLink but now they say CareLink is compatible with 14.4 iOS but I still get the message that it might look the same. Also when using CareLink it boots me out when I try to go to a different screen within CareLink . Very frustrating

The recent update (may 2023) has broken alerting (and is VERY annoying). I configure a 15 minute lag to give my wife time to address the low. Nearly every time, she’s resolved it or rebounded before I get alerted. However, since the update, I get the update every time. For example, I was just alerted to a low. (<50). I immediately opened CareLink , but she’s already at 73. Why am I being alerted to a non-issue? Annoying? Tye alarm continues to go off until I open CareLink . I can understand why, but ignoring alarms has never been my problem. When I would get an alert in the past, I wouldn’t bother opening CareLink , I just call or text my wife and check on her. If 5 minutes goes by and she’s still low, I used to get additional alerts. This constant alerting is VERY annoying and doesn’t help me help her in the least.

1. I fully agree with the other reviewer comment about making you pick the person you are following when you follow only one person. An annoying usability issue.

2. Integration with watchOS is needed. It is quite annoying when I receive alerts on my watch, and when I dismiss them, they pop up every 30 - 60 seconds until I go to CareLink on my phone to acknowledge them. This is rather annoying when my phone is not in immediate reach, and is especially annoying when I am driving and cannot fool around with my phone.

3. Each successive time I go to CareLink and refresh data, the spinning white circle spins slower and slower. Restarting CareLink seems to solve the issue temporarily.

4. Quite often, I stop getting notifications altogether. When I go to CareLink , it appears to restart (maybe it crashed?), and then I have a bunch of notifications to clear. Am I the only one reporting this?

This system for us is a huge expense. In our country no insurance help you with this. So this cost a fortune to have and maintain. Now we realize that after all efforts is not connecting at all. I can only see thru web. No way it connects thru app. What is the point on considering and making an effort to pay this if I cannot track my son at all times? If I need to connect to a computer to see it ?

I am Completely frustrated. One month of this sensor cost me what I pay for 6 months on other brand. And the other brand were connected right away and send me a big alarm when his levels are low.

This one don’t even connect. Even we trying to install and re install . It only log in and says “not connection with this app server “. I have been trying for 5 days in a row. Several times per day. NOTHING.

I feel this is a scam . I will be turning all this back !!

Having a sensor that I cannot track, I rather not have it. I don’t care if the sensor works fine. If I cannot see it on my phone app, if I don’t get alerts, is like having nothing at all.

So, I had left a review about CareLink only supporting/following one diabetic patient. I also emailed Medtronic and CareLink support group about this issue. I am extremely pleased with their response! They updated CareLink and now I can follow multiple people at the same time! Thank you to the Medtronic team and app developers! We really appreciate you listening to our requests! The school nurse will now be able to follow multiple kids with Medtronic devices. Thank you so much!

This upgrade is worthless if the MiniMed Mobile app is not upgraded to allow the 770 pump to work with the iPhone 14promax. Sorry not impressed yet.

My fiancé has been using the new 770 pump for about 2 weeks. I would say that, in total, CareLink has been supplying me with data for less than 2 days. It constantly drops the signal and I’ve had to re-pair the unit once or twice. Even when it does work, it is sporadic. I’m never more than 50 feet away from her so I have no idea why the signal keeps dropping. Needs a lot of work.
There are no words to describe my frustration with this software, even after I talked with tech support who told me we had to eliminate the Apple Watch software on her phone for it to work. Love the new pump. Hate CareLink . If I were Medtronic, I’d be embarrassed.

Is there any way this can be fixed!?! I am getting back to back notifications of “No new data”. I just want to delete CareLink and never use again!!! It’s super annoying. Too many notifications. I’m logged in and not sure why it does this?

I already totally deleted CareLink once in frustration because it disconnects/can’t get data ALL the time. I have a teenager who already hates to be pestered and I end up frustrating him more because I’m always having to check with him to be see if the problem is on his end. We had Dexcom and it was way better -always connected with more features and history. We have a Medtronics pump so wanted the “auto” but CareLink is so bad I’m considering switching back.

CareLink works awesome as long as you keep it updated. It alerted me when my sister was not responding to her low alert and she didn’t have low suspend enabled, so I called her and she was taking a nap! Her cat was trying to wake her up too. So thankful for this tech!

Stays synced much better with the 780g. Still pretty basic but the syncing has much improved!

In this release we can now follow up to five people. This is good but if you are following a single person the software requires you to select the single person. This extra menu selection is unnecessary when there is only a one person. The software should default to the single person since no other choice is available.

Repeat notifications are broken. In the notifications section accessed via the gear icon you can turn off the repeat notifications by clearing the bell icons. Here is the bug. These changes only last as long as you are logged in. When I log out and log back in all my saved notification preferences are reset back to the defaults. One of the previous updates started logging me out automatically after about 24 hours. So it a lot of work to redo everything after each login.

I hope Medtronic will take these issues to heart and enters them into their bug tracking system and provides real feedback here.

App doesn't recognize username/password used on my laptop acct. I update the password on the website like CareLink requires then CareLink still won't recognize it. Basically CareLink is useless

App does not recognize me when I try to use. I have to keep resetting my password. When running low this is absolutely critical for use and hard to reset when in this condition. Useless app. I don’t want to hear you’re sorry. This is an ongoing issue by me and other user reviews.

The data on CareLink is wonderful, but you have to re-sign in all the time and no Face ID features for quicker log on. I’ve had to re-sign in 3 times in 12 hours- same with another follower for this connection.
The security settings are too extreme for accessing time sensitive access on your diabetic connection. Had the dexcom app for years- not as much detailed data but it was so much friendlier for ease of use. Potentially exploring using dexcom 7 vs guardian just to have an easier app to use.
Please, please, please have a “remember me” or “stay logged in” option to check for being able to quickly monitor your connections numbers and data.

Constantly losing connection between my 780g and iPhone 13. So I stupidly upgraded the os from 16 to the new ios17.1.1. Now when you tap on the graph to see the exact time it shows 7pm all day long.

It’s very frustrating that pretty much EVERY time I try to use CareLink it says there is no data.

When I can get in its great, but I can’t ever get into CareLink . So it’s useless. I use it to follow what’s happening with my boyfriend. But it never works, and no troubleshooting seems to help.

Having to log in constantly just to check my kids data is the worst. The product team at Medtronic’s should be embarrassed to admit where the work. This is one of the most poorly designed applications I’ve ever experienced.

The entire product team should be fired and replaced by competent, skilled professionals. This is a joke of a product designed to enrage the end user at every turn.

Love that I can keep a close eye on my kiddo throughout the day, even if he isn’t with me. So thankful for Medtronic and all their medical advancements that help improve the lives of T1 diabetics. One thing I would love to see is the this app app having the ability to work with my Apple Watch and more stability with the linking.

CareLink is so frustrating…I’ve tried several time to
Login & have been unsuccessful. I was able to login to my online account and see all my data but what’s the use of an app if you can’t even login to it. NOT USER FRIENDLY AT ALL. Please find a way to improve this. I’ve only had this devise a few months and already I’m ready to switch back to Dexcom.

I track my significant others insulin pump, unfortunately half the time it says “no new data” but on her phone it works 99% of the time but isn’t updating on my phone. Very frustrating but love the equipment and extra data the pump and app supply.

As the adult child of a long-time Medtronics pump system, I’ve been on CareLink since original launch.
Apart from specific app issues (below), I question the value and purpose of CareLink and have come to believe it creates a false sense of security. we’ve come up with elaborate protocols for what to do if he does not respond when I get an alert. However, simple things like not having a good mobile signal have caused escalations. My being on CareLink gives the feeling of security - that I’m watching and can actually do something in an emergency -but I now seriously question that premise. Medtronics is totally useless as to user guidelines taking no ownership for how it should be used. Have a serious talk with your family about how you will use this before starting - what are you going to do if you get an alert at 2 am? And still be prepared for frustration and stress.
As to specific app issues:
It seems like they’ve finally fixed the “remember log-in” problem. I have CareLink set to notify me if my father doesn’t clear an alert within 5 minutes but I still get notifications even when he has cleared his alert within the 5 minute window. Makes no sense. Also, CareLink repeatedly changes my notification settings, most annoyingly, turning on the “repeat warning” feature. Weird but true.

It’s nice to be able to follow someone’s CGM, but for full coverage it would be great to have it on my Apple Watch. The minimed mobile does have an option on the Apple Watch, so it should be easy to add.

App keeps telling me no data found. I have to keep signing back in and nothing. It’s no help to me at all. Just taking up space on my phone.

CareLink has severe issues. If a Medtronic user is setup for you to have notifications you will receive a reminder every minute. For example if there is a low blood sugar you’re notified every minute even if the users blood sugar has risen. Every minute notification is awful!!!!! Other companies do not continue to notify you if corrected.