NotifyMe 2 is dead — Alternative Reminder App with Repeating Push Notifications?

[damian]

I've been using NotifyMe 2 for years and love it. Unfortunately, the developer stopped developing it, pulled it from the App store, and will be shutting down their servers later this month, rendering the app virtually unusable.

Unlike every other reminder app I've found, NotifyMe 2 offers push notifications to auto-repeat reminders. Why are push notifications so important? Because they allow for customizable auto-snooze (aka, "nag me") intervals. The best alternative I've found so far is Alarmed, but since it doesn't use push, it allows for "nag me" reminders only every minute or every hour. I prefer to choose intervals such as every 5, 15, or 30 minutes, which apparently is possible only using push technology.

I've been searching far and wide for an alternative to NotifyMe 2 that uses push to allow for auto-snooze/"nag me" reminders with intervals of any number of minutes the user chooses. So far, I've found nothing.

Does anyone know of an app that does this?

 

[GaryPDX]

I guess the lack of any responses at all is an answer in and of itself. I was always skeptical of Notifyme as I could never figure out how they could make enough money to support their service. In any case, I am working with Fantastical, Snoozemaster and the native mac and iOS applications which continue to lack features that seem necessary and easy to include. I'll just stop there on this point and avert my angry, detailed and lengthy rant...

A free iOS app called "Alarmed ~ Reminders + Timers" looks promising. I personally am a procrastinator and the app "Do it (Tomorrow) HD" also looks interesting. Both of these apps are compatible with both iPod and iPhone. Neither has a Mac desktop companion which is not a terribly big deal for me as I am really wanting something that works well and has the features I want on my iPhone.

 

[damian]

Thanks for your reply. Looks like we're in the same boat. I've been using the free Alarmed app you mentioned ever since NotifyMe shut down their servers on July 25. I tried about a dozen similar apps, and Alarmed has proven to be far and away the best.

I wrote to the developers of Alarmed (or another similar app—I forget) and they said that running servers to send push notifications simply doesn't make financial sense, which may be why NotifyMe and similar apps went bust.

So in the meantime, it looks like we may just need to wait for Apple to allow any-number-of-minutes customizable intervals for notifications. The developers of Alarmed (or a similar app—I forget) have submitted a bug report to Apple on this. Fingers crossed Apple changes their rules sometime soon.

 

[MEJHarrison]

I hope you find something. This has always been one of my pet peeves. I want to get a reminder and be able to say remind me in X minutes / hours / days. So simple. So useful. So frustrating that we still can't do that.

I actually went a different route. I set "reminders" up on GMail. Then I get emailed when the time approaches and they just sit in my GMail inbox until I do them and delete them or go back into my calendar and move the date.

It's a very inelegant solution. But it works for me. Still, I may have to check out one of these apps.

 

[GaryPDX]

To me, and everyone is different, the ideal procrastinator's notification rubric is the one used by Entourage. When a notification comes up, there is a menu box that allows you to select a variety of minutes and a variety of hours and "Tomorrow Morning" which is defined in preferences as the start of your work day set by you, and then more days.

The key is that unlike other such procrastinator support, the reminders come up first time in whatever morning rather than some multiple of 24 hours after you finally got tired of dismissing it and just say "Tomorrow" etc. These intervals are much like you might tell a personal assistant and not like a programmer thinks; being a business software company I suppose Microsoft is allowed to get something right! Of course Entourage is now over 5 years old and one of these days it will break with an OS X update.

So my search for a replacement that satisfies my life and work style.