Reminders and notifications

Put a reminder on a Book you lent out (“ask Sam for it back”), on a Project review for Friday at 4 PM, or on a Person’s birthday. When the time comes, Lar alerts you and the reminder waits in your list until you dismiss it.

Three related features:

• A reminder belongs to an Object and fires at a time you choose.
• A notification is an entry in the bell popover. Reminders, Workflows, sync, sharing, and updates create them.
• A capture is incoming content waiting to be sorted. Captures live on the Captures page, never in the bell.

Add a reminder to an Object

1. Open the Object’s ⋯ menu and choose Set reminder…, or run Add reminder to current Object… from the command palette.
2. Choose a preset to fill in the time: In 15 minutes, In 1 hour, Tomorrow morning (9 AM), or In 1 week. Or set Fire at to any local date and time.
3. Optionally add a Note (optional), such as “Bring the signed contract”.
4. Choose Add reminder.

The time must be in the future. An Object can have several reminders.

Tip

You rarely need to add reminders to Tasks by hand. Setting a Task’s date adds one automatically: 9 AM for an all-day date, or the exact time for a timed date.

Manage an Object’s reminders

Open Set reminder… again to see the Object’s reminders, ordered by time. Each one shows its state:

• pending: scheduled, not fired yet;
• fired: its time has arrived;
• dismissed: acknowledged after it fired.

Choose dismiss to acknowledge a fired reminder. Choose remove to delete a reminder; removing a pending one stops it from firing.

See all reminders in one list

Choose Reminders at the bottom of the sidebar, or run Open Upcoming reminders from the command palette. On a phone, it is under More.

Reminders are grouped into Overdue, Today, This week, Later, and Dismissed. Fired reminders you haven’t dismissed stay under Overdue. Each group shows a count and can be collapsed.

Each row shows the Object’s title and Type, a relative time (hover for the full date and time), and any note, with dismiss and remove buttons. Select a row to open the Object.

What happens when a reminder fires

Lar shows a system notification, an in-app Reminder: message with an Open button, and a new entry in the notification bell.

To keep Object titles off your lock screen, turn on Hide note content in reminder notifications in Settings → Appearance. The system notification then just says “Reminder”; selecting it still opens the Object.

Use the notification bell

The bell sits next to the workspace name at the top of the sidebar. In a narrow window, it is in the header of the Library page. The mobile app has no bell; open Reminders from More instead. A count next to it shows unread notifications; turn Show Captures badge count off in Settings → Appearance to hide the count in the sidebar.

Unread notifications are listed first. Read ones are collapsed under Earlier, which shows up to the 20 most recent. Repeated events can be combined into one row with a count, such as ×3.

From the popover you can:

• select a row to mark it read and open its details;
• choose Mark read on one row, or Mark all read in the header;
• Snooze a reminder notification for 10 minutes, 1 hour, until this evening, or until tomorrow morning;
• Dismiss a row;
• run action buttons that a Workflow or other source attached.

Closing the popover marks informational notifications as read. Error notifications stay until you retry or dismiss them.

Snoozing hides the notification until the time you pick. It doesn’t change the Object’s date, a Task’s date or deadline, or the reminder itself. To reschedule, edit the Task or the reminder.

Inspect a notification

Select a notification to open Notification details. Depending on the source, it shows:

• Kind and Received time;
• Occurrences;
• Message;
• Payload, the structured data the source attached;
• Actions;
• Open workflow or Open object.

If there’s no payload, or it couldn’t be stored, the dialog says so. It never shows a blank value without explanation.

Notifications versus Captures

The bell holds notifications only. When captures are waiting, its footer shows a link such as 3 in Captures — open. Archive, convert, or dismiss captures on the Captures page.

In short:

• Notifications: acknowledge events and errors.
• Captures: decide what incoming content becomes.
• Reminders: manage time-based reminders on your Objects.

Troubleshooting

A reminder didn’t alert me. Lar has to be open for a reminder to fire. If it was closed, an overdue reminder fires the next time you open Lar, and it is always listed under Overdue in Reminders. Also check that your operating system allows notifications from Lar. In the mobile app, open Settings → Notifications and choose Allow notifications.

A notification action failed. The notification stays in the bell and Lar shows an error. Open it and try again rather than assuming the change went through.

The bell is empty but I expected captures. Captures never appear as notifications. Open Captures in the sidebar.

Next: Tasks · Process your Captures