A life counter for Magic: The Gathering on iPhone and iPad. The dice roll across the felt like real ones, and you drag commander damage onto the player it hits.
For iPhone, iPhone Duo and iPad with iOS 26.
I have built Life Counter since 2019 for the games at my own table. For version 4.0 I started again from the first line, for iOS 26.
The app is free and shows no ads. You don't sign up for anything: your games are saved on your phone, not on a server of mine.
Daniel Boberg
Throw a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 or percentile dice, up to six at once, and they tumble across the table with sound and haptics. There are nine sets, from garnet and obsidian to brass, or the colour of the seat that throws. Who goes first is a roll from the table menu.
A natural 20 turns the result gold.
With one to six players, or two teams in Two-Headed Giant, each area turns to the person sitting there, so nobody reads their life upside down. A warm lamp lights the seat whose turn it is. Tap to count, or type the number on the keypad.
The lamp moves on when you pass the turn.
Every player has a commander coin. Tap it when the commander is cast and the tax goes up by two. Drag it onto the player it hits and the damage is written against that commander, with partners kept apart. At 15 the coin turns amber.
How Life Counter plays Commander
At 21 the app asks before anyone is out.
iPhone Duo
Folded, the cover display holds a board with a rail of shortcuts along its edge. Unfold the phone and the board spreads across the inner display.
Cover display
The rail holds what the table shares: monarch, initiative, day and night up top, then pass the turn, undo, dice and the menu. Drag a token from the rail onto a player and back.
Inner display
Every seat still turns to its player, and each area is big enough for its commander's card art.
The inner display turns with the table, upright or on its side. Once the match is under way it keeps its orientation until the game ends, so a bumped table never spins the board. One item in the table menu frees it.
Search a commander and its card art fills the player's area. On iPad six of them fit around the table. The art comes from Scryfall, only when you search, and stays on your device. After a game, Share turns the match into an image for the group chat.
You can pick any printing, and the artist is named with it.
Classic green felt under a warm lamp, Midnight in navy and moonlight, Bordeaux in wine red, Slate in graphite, Walnut wood with a green felt inlay. Pick one in the table menu and the board, the menus and every panel take it on.
Finished games are saved on your device. Drag along the life chart and the table above it shows that moment again, down to the big commander hit and the winner's lowest point. Statistics by player and by deck count finished games only. The whole history exports as a file or as CSV.
Poison, energy, experience, rad, speed, the Ring's temptation, storm and dungeon. Only the ones you switch on show up.
Monarch, initiative, day and night sit in the middle and go to whoever takes them.
Every change can be taken back, one step at a time.
An optional match clock and a quiet light for a long turn. When nobody touches the table the board dims, and it stays awake until the game ends.
VoiceOver reads every player area. Increase Contrast, Reduce Motion and Differentiate Without Color are honoured.
English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean and Chinese in simplified and traditional script.
Pick the format when you start a game. Starting life, counters and the tokens on the table follow it.
Standard and every other format that starts at 20, and Brawl with 25 life for two players and 30 for more.
Short answers to everything Life Counter keeps track of, each with its Comprehensive Rules number.
4.0 replaces the old app under the same name, so you update it from the App Store as usual.
Everyone who used Life Counter before 4.0 is a Founder. If paid extras ever come, Founders get them free.
Yes. Version 4.0 has no ads, no account and nothing to buy. If paid extras come later, everyone who used the app before 4.0 gets them free as a Founder.
Version 4.0 runs on iPhone, iPhone Duo and iPad with iOS 26 or later. Older iPhones and Android keep version 3, which stays in the stores.
Yes, per commander, with partners counted apart, and at 21 the app asks whether the player is out. It plays Standard, Pioneer, Modern and other 20 life formats, Commander, Brawl and Two-Headed Giant, for one to six players.
40. Standard and most other formats start at 20, Brawl at 25 for two players and 30 for more, Two-Headed Giant at 30 per team. Life Counter sets it when you pick the format.
In a single game, or the first game of a match, any fair method decides, such as a die roll. After that the loser of the previous game chooses. Life Counter rolls for the first turn from the table menu, every seat with the same chance.
No. Everything stays on your device. The account of version 3 is not used by 4.0.
Matches, players and settings saved on your iPhone are taken over on the first launch. History that only existed in the cloud is not imported.
No. The only thing it fetches is card art from Scryfall, and only when you search for a commander. Everything else works offline.
Yes. Export your history as a file or as CSV from the history screen, under More, or from the settings. On the other device, import the file. A preview shows what is new before anything is added.
Life Counter is on the App Store for iPhone, iPhone Duo and iPad with iOS 26.
Download on theApp Store
