How to choose a reminder app: what actually matters

What a reminder app is really for

Psychologists call it prospective memory: remembering to do something later. Take the bins out on Tuesday night, call the dentist when the practice opens, take a tablet with breakfast. It fails in a specific way. You don’t forget the task exists; you forget it at the moment it matters.

Researchers split these intentions into two kinds. Time-based ones are tied to a clock or a date (“pay rent on the 1st”). Event-based ones are tied to a situation (“when I pass the pharmacy, pick up the prescription”). Gilles Einstein and Mark McDaniel’s 1990 paper on ageing and prospective memory helped set up the lab method still used to study the second kind, and it reported that external aids helped performance. A good app should cover both kinds, which is why the trigger options below matter.

If you want the broader case for moving intentions out of your head and into a tool, our guide to building a second brain covers the research on cognitive offloading. Here we focus on choosing the tool.

What the research says about reminders that work

Three findings are useful when choosing and using an app.

1. Friction kills reminders. In two pre-registered experiments published in 2024, Gavin Chiu and Sam Gilbert of University College London made setting a reminder more or less physically effortful. When it took more effort, people set fewer reminders, at every memory load tested. Being able to set reminders helped people make up for a heavy memory load when it was easy; that benefit shrank when it was hard. These were online lab tasks, not daily life, but the lesson carries over: if adding a reminder takes six taps, you’ll skip it for the ones that feel “easy to remember”.

2. The words matter. Melissa Guynn, Mark McDaniel and Gilles Einstein (1998) ran four experiments on reminders given during a waiting period. The reminders that worked named both the trigger and the action. Reminders that mentioned only the trigger didn’t improve performance compared with no reminder at all. In practice, “Dentist” is weaker than “Call the dentist to move Thursday’s appointment”.

3. Reminders help with medication, within limits. The World Health Organization’s 2003 report on long-term therapies found that adherence among patients with chronic diseases in developed countries averages only 50%. Forgetting is only one cause among many (cost, side effects, doubts about the treatment), but it’s the one reminders can address. A 2016 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine by Jay Thakkar and colleagues pooled 16 randomised trials (2,742 patients) and found that text-message reminders roughly doubled the odds of adherence (odds ratio 2.11). The authors caution that the trials were short (median 12 weeks) and most measured adherence by self-report. For anything about your treatment itself, ask your doctor or pharmacist.

The five criteria that actually matter

1. Capture speed. Time yourself adding “Renew car insurance, 15 March, 9 am, repeat yearly”. Under ten seconds is good. Typed natural language (“every other Friday at 6”) and voice both help. If the app makes you scroll through date pickers, you’ll use it less, as the Chiu and Gilbert results suggest.

2. Repeat rules. Daily and weekly are standard. Check the awkward ones: every two weeks, the last working day of the month, the 15th of every quarter, once a year. Also check what happens when you tick off a repeating reminder late: does the next one count from the due date or from when you ticked it?

3. The right trigger. Time is the basic trigger. A location trigger (“when I leave work”) is useful for errands, but it depends on location permissions and isn’t offered everywhere. Decide whether you need it before you choose.

4. Sharing. A household runs on shared reminders: school forms, the boiler service, a parent’s appointments. Check that others can add, edit and tick off items from their own phone, and that everyone gets notified.

5. Notifications that fire. This is the criterion reviews skip and the one that matters most. The next section explains why.

Why reminders fail on some phones

On Android. Since Android 6.0, a feature called Doze saves battery when the phone is unplugged, still and has its screen off. According to Android’s developer documentation, Doze defers standard alarms to periodic “maintenance windows”, and even the alarms allowed to fire during Doze can’t go off more than once every nine minutes per app. A related feature, App Standby, restricts apps you haven’t opened for a while. Since Android 14, newly installed apps are no longer granted permission to schedule exact alarms by default, with an exception for calendar and alarm clock apps. You control that permission in Settings > Apps > Special app access > Alarms & reminders.

Some manufacturers add their own, more aggressive battery management on top. Don’t kill my app! (dontkillmyapp.com), a community site run by the developers of the Sleep as Android app, documents brand by brand how these settings stop background apps, with step-by-step fixes. When we checked, its ranking of the worst offenders was led by Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Samsung, while phones running stock Android scored best.

On iPhone. The usual culprit is a Focus (Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Work) that silences the app. In Settings > Focus, you can allow notifications from specific apps, and a Focus can let Time Sensitive notifications through. If you use a web app added to your Home Screen, iOS has supported its notifications since iOS 16.4, and they follow the same Focus rules as other apps.

What your phone already does for free

Before paying for anything, look at the built-in options.

Two changes to know about. In 2023, Google moved Google Assistant and Calendar reminders into Google Tasks. Google Keep reminders followed in the second half of 2025, and Google’s help pages now say location-based reminders can no longer be created. If you relied on “remind me when I get to the supermarket” on Android, you’ll need another tool for that.

The built-in apps are good enough for many people. A dedicated app earns its place when you need something they don’t do well: faster capture, finer repeat rules, sharing across iPhone and Android in one household, or reminders sitting next to the rest of your life admin.

Where Binome360 fits (and where it doesn’t)

Binome360 is our app, so here’s exactly what it does for reminders. You type or say a sentence (“remind me every first Monday at 8 to put out the recycling”) and the assistant prepares a one-off or recurring reminder. Nothing is saved until you confirm. You tick reminders off or snooze them. In a shared assistant (a couple, a family, a small team), reminders are shared and everyone adds from their own phone. Notifications arrive on the web and in the installed app: on Android through the app, on iPhone through the web app installed from Safari.

When to pick something else: if you need location-based reminders, Binome360 doesn’t offer them; Apple Reminders does. If all you want is a free list on one iPhone, the built-in app may be enough. Binome360 makes sense when reminders sit alongside money, shared household tasks or savings in the same conversation. It costs $3.99 a month after a 7-day free trial, with every module included.

Test any reminder app in one week

Write each test reminder with the action in it (“Call Dr Okafor’s office to move the appointment”), not just a keyword. Once the app passes, move your recurring life admin into it first: bills, renewals, birthdays. Our guide to bill reminders has a full annual calendar to start from, and our to-do list guide covers what belongs on a list rather than in a reminder.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best reminder app?

There isn’t one best app for everyone. The right one is the app you can add to in a few seconds and whose notifications reliably reach you on your phone. For many iPhone users that’s Apple Reminders; Android users often start with Google Tasks. Test with the one-week checklist before you commit.

Why are my reminders not going off on Android?

Often it’s battery optimisation: Doze, App Standby or the manufacturer’s own battery manager delays or blocks the app. Allow notifications, allow “Alarms & reminders” if the app asks, set the app’s battery usage to unrestricted, and check your phone brand on dontkillmyapp.com.

Can Google Assistant still set reminders?

Yes, but they’re now Google Tasks. Google migrated Assistant reminders to Tasks in 2023. Google’s help page says you can no longer set tasks for a location.

Are location-based reminders reliable?

They depend on location permissions and battery settings, so they’re less predictable than time-based ones. For anything critical, add a time-based backup.

In short

Choose a reminder app on five things: capture speed, repeat rules, triggers, sharing and notifications that really fire. Start with your phone’s built-in app, and write every reminder with the action in it. First step: tonight, set a test reminder for 2 am, lock your phone and see whether it rings.

Sources

• Android Developers, “Optimize for Doze and App Standby”: developer.android.com.
• Android Developers, “Schedule exact alarms are denied by default” (Android 14): developer.android.com.
• Urban Android, “Don’t kill my app!”: dontkillmyapp.com.
• Google, Pixel Phone Help, “Keep Adaptive Battery & battery optimization on”: support.google.com.
• Apple Support, “Use Reminders on your iPhone or iPad”: support.apple.com; “Share lists and collaborate in Reminders on iPhone”: support.apple.com; “Allow or silence notifications for a Focus on iPhone”: support.apple.com.
• WebKit, “Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS”, 2023: webkit.org.
• Google Workspace Updates, “Google Calendar and Assistant Reminders will migrate to Google Tasks soon”, February 2023: workspaceupdates.googleblog.com.
• Google Tasks Help, “Learn about Google Keep reminders in Google Tasks”: support.google.com; “Manage repeating tasks in Google Tasks & Google Calendar”: support.google.com.
• Google Assistant Help, “Set & manage Google Tasks with Google Assistant”: support.google.com.
• Gilles O. Einstein and Mark A. McDaniel, “Normal aging and prospective memory”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16(4), 717–726, 1990: doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.16.4.717.
• Melissa J. Guynn, Mark A. McDaniel and Gilles O. Einstein, “Prospective memory: When reminders fail”, Memory & Cognition, 26(2), 287–298, 1998: doi.org/10.3758/BF03201140.
• Gavin Chiu and Sam J. Gilbert, “Influence of the physical effort of reminder-setting on strategic offloading of delayed intentions”, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2024: doi.org/10.1177/17470218231199977.
• World Health Organization, Adherence to Long-Term Therapies: Evidence for Action, 2003: paho.org (PDF).
• Jay Thakkar et al., “Mobile Telephone Text Messaging for Medication Adherence in Chronic Disease: A Meta-analysis”, JAMA Internal Medicine, 176(3), 340–349, 2016: jamanetwork.com.

Also available in Français.