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.
One-off — a single date and time. The free built-in option comes first below, because for plenty of people it is genuinely the whole answer.
One-off reminders carry the most risk per alert: there is no second chance next week and no habit to catch you if the single notification lands at a bad moment.
Why this one slips: Plenty of countries want six months of validity left, so the real deadline is months before the date printed in the book — and nothing prompts you until you are already booking a trip.
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: a reminder you set nine months ago fires with no urgency attached, because the trip that made it urgent does not exist yet.
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.
Plenty of countries want six months of validity left, so the real deadline is months before the date printed in the book — and nothing prompts you until you are already booking a trip.
Deadlines, renewals and paperwork that nobody else is going to chase you about. 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. One-off reminders carry the most risk per alert: there is no second chance next week and no habit to catch you if the single notification lands at a bad moment.
Read next: an app that calls instead of sending notifications · reminders when your phone is on silent · is it a real call or a notification?
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.
Get ReminderCall — free on the App Store Get →