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: The balance is invisible until it runs out, and it runs out at lunchtime, in front of your child, hours after you could have fixed it.
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: a silent morning banner is competing with getting everyone out of the door.
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 balance is invisible until it runs out, and it runs out at lunchtime, in front of your child, hours after you could have fixed it.
The people and animals who depend on the routine happening roughly on time. 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: setting up a daily reminder call for mum · helping elderly parents remember appointments · can it call my parent instead of me?
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 →