Reminders as loud as you need
Four levels, from a quiet pulse in the notch to taking over every screen.
The quiet level: the notch breathes with current around its edge until you answer it: today's list, an overdue one, and the four loudness levels.
The problem
A notification is easy to miss and a calendar alert is easy to dismiss without reading. Some things you genuinely cannot forget: leaving for a flight, taking medication, a call you promised.
How Reminders works
Type it the way you'd say it: "call dad at 5pm", "standup every weekday 9:30", "stretch in 20 min", "team sync every monday 11:00". The time and repeat it understood appear under the box before you commit.
Then choose how loud. Notch: the notch itself swells and contracts with a line of current tracing its edge and your reminder beside it, silently, until you click it. Notification: a macOS banner with Done and Snooze, which fires even if the app was quit. Alarm: a looping sound and a card that stays put until you act. Takeover: every screen goes dark with the reminder in the middle, and nothing else is clickable until you deal with it.
Switch on Escalate if ignored and a reminder climbs one level every five minutes until you answer it, so a notification you walked past becomes an alarm, then a takeover.
Snooze for 5, 15 or 60 minutes from any level. Repeats can be daily, weekdays, weekly or specific days, and completing one schedules the next. If the Mac was asleep when something was due, it fires the moment you wake it and tells you how late it is.
Tips
- Keep Takeover for the few things that genuinely justify it, or it stops meaning anything.
- Escalation pairs well with Notification: quiet by default, impossible to miss if you wander off.
Questions
- Will it wake my Mac?
- No. Nothing can wake a sleeping Mac for a reminder. It fires the moment you wake it and shows how overdue it is.
- Does the alarm work if my Mac is muted?
- No, muted is muted. macOS only lets medical and safety apps override that.
- Does it show through Do Not Disturb?
- The notification level follows your Focus settings. The alarm and takeover are drawn by NotchMan itself, so they appear regardless.
- Is this the same as Apple Reminders?
- No. This is time-based and about being heard, not a to-do list. NotchMan's Tasks tab covers your list; Reminders is the alarm clock beside it.
Goes well with
Reminders is one of sixteen tools in NotchMan.
One-time purchase, everything stays on your Mac, macOS 14 or later.
Updated 2026-09-24