Kan Do

Tasks

Reminders and Notifications

Alert When Due, Alert Until Done, Alert at Start, snoozing, location alerts, app badges, and how reminders behave across devices.

Kan Do's reminders are local notifications scheduled on each of your devices. There's no server involved, and the first time you turn one on the system asks whether Kan Do may send notifications.

The three alerts

Each is a toggle in the task's details:

AlertWhen it fires
Alert When DueAt the due time. With a due date but no time, it fires in the morning of that day
Alert Until DoneAt the due time, and then again on a repeating cadence until you complete the task
Alert at StartWhen the start date and time arrive

Subtasks with their own due date get their own reminder as well.

Alert Until Done

Some tasks need nagging. Alert Until Done re-sends the reminder until the task is marked complete.

  • The cadence is set per task with Remind Every: Every 30 Minutes, Every Hour, Every 3 Hours, or Every Day.
  • Default follows the app-wide setting in Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Alert Until Done Reminds.
  • The Add Task Shortcuts action has matching Alert Until Done and Remind Every fields.

What the notification looks like

The title is the task's title. The body reads "Due today", "Due at 3:30 PM", "Overdue — was due …", "Starts today", or "Starts at 3:30 PM". Press and hold (or pull down) the notification for its buttons:

  • Mark Done completes the task.
  • Snooze 1 Hour brings the same reminder back in an hour.
  • Snooze Until Tonight brings it back at 6 PM.
  • Snooze Until Tomorrow moves the task's due date to tomorrow.

Subtask reminders offer Mark Done only.

Snoozing repeating tasks

The two short snoozes leave the task's date untouched, so a repeating task keeps its schedule. Snooze Until Tomorrow changes the due date, which shifts the series, so use the one-hour or tonight snooze on anything that repeats.

Across devices

Snoozing, completing, or rescheduling a task on one device quiets it on your other iPhones and iPads within seconds. As soon as the change syncs, each device reschedules its own alerts in the background, and a banner for a task that was snoozed or moved elsewhere is cleared from that device's Notification Center. You don't need to open Kan Do on the other device for this to happen.

Location alerts

Add a Location to a task and turn on Notify When Arriving or Notify When Leaving. These alerts are delivered by your iPhone, which needs location access for Kan Do (the system asks the first time). See Tasks and Cards.

App icon badge

Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Badge Icon with Overdue Tasks puts the number of overdue tasks on the app icon. It's off by default.

If reminders aren't arriving

  1. Open the system Settings app, find Kan Do under Notifications, and check that notifications are allowed and that Time Sensitive or banners aren't turned off.
  2. Make sure the task actually has Alert When Due (or Alert Until Done or Alert at Start) turned on. A due date alone doesn't notify.
  3. Focus modes can silence Kan Do. Check the Focus you're in.
  4. On the Mac, notifications are scheduled by the Mac app. If Kan Do isn't running on the Mac and the task was created elsewhere, the iPhone or iPad that has the task will still alert.

Reminders and the widget

Widgets don't send notifications, but they refresh as soon as a change syncs in, so a snoozed or completed task updates on every Home Screen promptly.

Tip

For anything you keep putting off, set Alert Until Done to Every Hour. It's annoying in exactly the way you want it to be, and it stops the moment you tap the circle.