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.
Weekly — the same day each week. The free built-in option comes first below, because for plenty of people it is genuinely the whole answer.
Weekly is the worst of both worlds — often enough to matter, rare enough that no habit ever forms, so the alert arrives as a surprise every time.
Why this one slips: It is a slightly awkward thing to do, and awkward tasks with no fixed date drift a week at a time until the amount is old enough to be embarrassing.
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: you postpone it the moment you see it, and postponing costs nothing when the alert makes no noise.
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.
It is a slightly awkward thing to do, and awkward tasks with no fixed date drift a week at a time until the amount is old enough to be embarrassing.
Dated obligations with a fee on the other side of them — the ones where forgetting has a price. 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. Weekly is the worst of both worlds — often enough to matter, rare enough that no habit ever forms, so the alert arrives as a surprise every time.
Read next: a bill payment reminder that actually works · a reminder app for people who forget everything · setting a repeating monthly call
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 →