How to stop missing reminders: alerts, quiet hours and nudge styles
Pingr schedules every alert on your phone, so reminders ring with the app closed and no signal. To make them reliable, allow notifications, turn on alarms and reminders, and set battery use to unrestricted. Then choose a nudge style and, if you like, quiet hours that hold alerts until morning.
A reminder is only useful if it rings when you need it. Pingr was built around that: the alerts do not depend on a server pushing a message at the right second. They are planned on your phone from your items and your settings, and the phone's own alarm system delivers them. This guide explains how that works, what Android needs from you, and how to tune the extras: snooze, follow-up nudges and quiet hours.
Why alerts work offline
Pingr keeps a rolling set of the nearest alerts scheduled on the device, 48 by default, and re-plans it whenever an item changes, after a sync, and when the app starts. Because the schedule lives on the phone, an alert for a reminder you added on a train with no signal still rings on time. Syncing only matters for getting items to and from your other devices.
Three settings Android decides
Some phones stop apps from waking up to deliver alerts. Pingr has a help screen called Make alerts reliable in Settings that walks through the three settings that matter and lets you check them one by one:
- Notifications: allowed for Pingr. Without this no alert can appear.
- Alarms and reminders (exact alarms): on Android 12 and newer, alerts can arrive minutes late unless this is on. Pingr cannot read this setting, so you have to check it yourself, and the screen opens the right page.
- Battery: choose Unrestricted, or Do not optimise, for Pingr. Some phone brands also have an auto-start switch in their own settings.
The same screen has a test ping. It sends a notification in 10 seconds, so close the app and lock the phone to test properly. If the test arrives, your real alerts will too.
Lead time, several alerts and snooze
An item with a time can carry up to twenty alerts, each a lead time before the time or an exact time. In Settings, then Notifications, you set the default lead time for reminders and tasks (at the time, or 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes before) and a separate default for events, which starts at 10 minutes before. On the notification itself Android shows three buttons: Done, Snooze 10 min and Snooze 1 hour. From the item you can also snooze to later today, this evening, tomorrow morning or a custom time. The morning and evening times come from Settings, then Preferences, and start at 09:00 and 18:00.
Nudge styles
A nudge is a follow-up ping for a reminder or task you have not marked done. You choose how persistent Pingr is in Settings, then Notifications, under Nudge style. The follow-ups are counted from the last alert, and they stop when you complete the item.
| Style | Follow-ups after the alert | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Gentle | 1 hour | 1 |
| Firm | 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours | 4 |
| Persistent | 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 minutes, then 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4 hours | 10 |
Gentle is the starting value. Nudges apply to reminders and tasks; events are not nudged.
Quiet hours
Turn on Quiet hours in Settings, then Notifications, and pick a start and end. The preset is 22:00 to 07:00, and the window can cross midnight. An alert that falls inside the window waits and rings when it ends, so nothing wakes you, and nothing is lost. If one reminder must ring anyway, such as an early flight, open its alerts and turn on Break through quiet hours for that item. There is also a setting that makes new items start with break through on, which is off by default.
Where Pingr is not the best fit
Pingr cannot read the alarms and reminders permission, so it can only ask you to check it. If your phone brand restricts background apps aggressively, you may need to change that brand's own settings too. And as a paid app for Android, it does not help if you use an iPhone.
To set this up on your own phone, get the app and open Settings, then Make alerts reliable. Related: set a reminder in seconds.
Questions and answers
Do alerts work with no signal?
Yes. Alerts are scheduled on the phone, so they ring with the app closed and the phone offline, as long as the three Android settings are in order.
Can I stop alerts at night but keep one?
Yes. Turn on quiet hours, then set Break through quiet hours on the single item that must ring.
Which nudge style is the default?
Gentle is the starting value, which asks once more after an hour, and the setup questions at onboarding can change it. You can change it any time in Settings, then Notifications.