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.
Quarterly — four fixed dates a year. The free built-in option comes first below, because for plenty of people it is genuinely the whole answer.
Quarterly deadlines are dated rather than rhythmic — the date is set by somebody else, and a quiet alert on a busy day is all that stands between you and a penalty.
Why this one slips: Four dates a year, set by somebody else, none of which line up with anything else in your calendar — so each one has to be remembered from scratch.
Two alerts on a dated event is genuinely the right free tool for a deadline, and it costs nothing. Its weakness is the same as every notification: both alerts are silent banners you can clear without doing anything. If the timing is the hard part, an iPhone Clock alarm is stronger — iOS exempts alarms from the silent switch and from Do Not Disturb.
A silent banner still loses here: the penalty for being late is real and the notification is silent, and those two facts should not sit together.
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.
Four dates a year, set by somebody else, none of which line up with anything else in your calendar — so each one has to be remembered from scratch.
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. Quarterly deadlines are dated rather than rhythmic — the date is set by somebody else, and a quiet alert on a busy day is all that stands between you and a penalty.
Read next: a bill payment reminder that actually works · a reminder app for people who forget everything · setting a repeating monthly call
Two alerts on a dated event is genuinely the right free tool for a deadline, and it costs nothing. Its weakness is the same as every notification: both alerts are silent banners you can clear without doing anything. If the timing is the hard part, an iPhone Clock alarm is stronger — iOS exempts alarms from the silent switch and from Do Not Disturb.
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.
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