Alarm-grade reminders

Loud enough to be useful, on the two tasks that deserve it.

Alarm clocks solved this decades ago. We trust one to wake us for a flight and we don’t trust a notification to survive a coat pocket — and yet the reminder for the thing that actually matters arrives as a notification. This is the same treatment, pointed at your nine o’clock task instead of your seven o’clock commute.

Why an ordinary notification can’t wake you

A normal reminder is a polite guest. It posts a line in the shade, plays a short sound if the phone happens to be unmuted and unbusy, and then waits to be noticed. Do Not Disturb stops it. A face-down phone stops it. Sleep stops it comprehensively. And none of that is a bug — it is the correct behaviour for the ninety per cent of notifications that aren’t important. The problem is that the other ten per cent get the same envelope.

What alarm-grade means here

• The whole screen, over the lock screen, not a strip at the top.
• Alarm audio on a dedicated channel, not the notification chime.
• Past Do Not Disturb, where the phone and its manufacturer allow it.
• The same two answers as every other reminder: Done, and Wait with the real number of minutes it buys.

That last one matters more than it looks. An alarm you can only silence is a snooze button with better speakers — it clears the screen and leaves the task exactly where it was. Here, silencing it isn’t one of the options: the loop is still open, and it will be back.

Loudness is a per-task setting

There is one ladder — silent, then sound, then alarm — and each task carries an Intensity that decides which rungs it may stand on.

• Quiet waits silently in the shade and never climbs past an ordinary sound, whatever happens. This is the right setting for most things.
• Loud starts with a sound and may climb to an alarm if you leave enough reminders unanswered.
• Alarm starts at the top, from the first reminder, and stays there.

Loudness is deliberately separate from how often a reminder returns, so the two never get tangled: a task can be quiet and relentless, or rare and deafening. That second dial is Tempo.

The alarm you earn, and the alarm you choose

A task set to Loud doesn’t start by shouting. It climbs one rung for every two reminders you leave unanswered — so the alarm, when it comes, is a description of what has been happening rather than a mood. Swipe reminders away and the climb happens sooner, because a dismissal counts.

A task set to Alarm skips the argument and starts at the top. That is for the small number of things where the first miss is already too late.

Once a loop has climbed it holds that volume until it is closed. It doesn’t go back to whispering while it is still open — that would just be the notification you already ignored, arriving again.

The off switch is real

One setting turns alarm-grade reminders off across the whole app. It is stored on the server as well as on the phone, which means a reminder that had already been sent is capped on the way in: the loudest it can arrive is an ordinary sound. Switching it off costs you nothing else — the reminders keep coming at the tempo you chose, they just stop being able to take over the screen.

There is also a global pause, for a day, three days, a week or a date you pick, which silences everything including alarms; and a per-task pause for the one thing you genuinely cannot do this month.

Quiet hours, and the one thing that breaks through

Set a quiet window and silent and sound reminders wait it out — and they do not queue up to land as a burst the moment it ends, which is the failure mode that makes people abandon quiet hours everywhere else. The alarm rung is the single exception, because a task you deliberately marked Alarm is the one you asked to be woken for. Reminders delivered in Telegram stay silent through the window at every level, no exceptions.

Why Android first

Because this is where it is possible. Full-screen, alarm-grade delivery is least restricted on Android, and a persistent reminder that cannot actually get through is a marketing claim rather than a feature. There is no iOS app and no web app today, and no date to promise for either — the Android app is in private testing and there is no store listing yet, which is why this page asks for an email instead of offering a download.