Everything on one screen: how often this usually needs to happen, the free way to set it on the iPhone you already own, and what changes if a phone call does it instead.
Yearly — once a year, on a date. The free built-in option comes first below, because for plenty of people it is genuinely the whole answer.
A reminder you set a year ago is a message from a stranger. By the time it fires you have changed phones, changed habits and lost the context that made it urgent.
Why this one slips: The right time to do it is before the cold arrives, and the moment you actually think of it is the first genuinely cold evening — several weeks too late.
This is free, already on your phone, and for a lot of people it is genuinely enough — try it for a fortnight before paying anyone, including us. Its limit is that it ends in a notification: it is not exempt from Do Not Disturb the way a Clock alarm is, and a banner can be cleared without being read. If the timing is the hard part, set a repeating Clock alarm instead — iOS lets alarms sound even on a muted phone.
A silent banner still loses here: an autumn banner about heating is easy to dismiss while it is still warm enough not to care.
With ReminderCall your phone rings like a normal incoming call — a real call over the phone network, not a banner and not an in-app alarm. You answer, and a voice reads the reminder out loud in the words you wrote. Answering is an action, which is harder to do absent-mindedly than clearing a notification.
To be precise about it: a call follows your ring settings rather than your notification settings. On hard mute it vibrates and takes over your screen instead of ringing out loud, unless you save the number as a contact with Emergency Bypass switched on yourself.
The right time to do it is before the cold arrives, and the moment you actually think of it is the first genuinely cold evening — several weeks too late.
Weekly rhythms and one-off risks around the house, from bin night to the oven you walked away from. The failure is almost never that you did not know — it is that the prompt arrived at a moment when acknowledging it was easier than acting on it. A reminder you set a year ago is a message from a stranger. By the time it fires you have changed phones, changed habits and lost the context that made it urgent.
Read next: a reminder app for people who forget everything · reminders when your phone is on silent · weekly and monthly repeats
This is free, already on your phone, and for a lot of people it is genuinely enough — try it for a fortnight before paying anyone, including us. Its limit is that it ends in a notification: it is not exempt from Do Not Disturb the way a Clock alarm is, and a banner can be cleared without being read. If the timing is the hard part, set a repeating Clock alarm instead — iOS lets alarms sound even on a muted phone.
The other free move, and often the more effective one: anchor it to something you already do without thinking — after the kettle goes on, before you lock the front door, as you sit down at your desk. A reminder attached to an existing habit needs far less from your phone. Try both for a fortnight before you pay anybody for this.
Get ReminderCall — free on the App Store Get →