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Reminders

/profile/reminders, and the same panel under /settings.

The three master switches

SwitchDefaultWhat it covers
Medication remindersOnEvery medicine you asked to be reminded about
Appointment remindersOnCalendar events with a reminder set
Nudge me if I have not logged by 9pmOffThe day-with-nothing-in-it prompt

The asymmetry is the product. Being reminded to take a tablet is why you entered it in the first place; being nudged for not writing something down is the app asking for attention it was not offered, so it is opted into rather than out of.

These are master switches. A single medicine can still have its own reminder turned off, and turning the master off silences every medicine at once.

Quiet hours

Quiet hours are kept on the device, not on your account, and the panel says so where you can read it. That is the right home rather than merely the convenient one: the same person may want medication reminders on the handset in their pocket and not on the tablet in the kitchen.

On Android

Reminders are delivered by Android itself, so one arrives whether or not LifeWell is open.

LifeWell never asks for the exact-alarm permission

Android reserves exact alarms for alarm clocks and calendars. The notification plugin declares that permission by default; LifeWell strips it from the build and schedules every reminder inexactly. A reminder may therefore land a few minutes either side of its time. The alternative was asking for a permission Google does not grant to an app of this kind, which would have failed review rather than working.

Push notifications

Push is a separate thing from a reminder, and it is worth keeping the two apart:

  • A reminder is scheduled by your own device from something you entered. It works offline.
  • A push notification comes from us — an announcement, or something that happened on your account.

Push is receive-only: LifeWell subscribes your device and routes the tap. It is switched on per device, never automatically, and web push works only on the deployed site.

Push is not built yet

The subscription plumbing and the app identifier are in place; the service that uses them is not written. Reminders work today. Push notifications do not arrive yet, on any platform.

What a reminder shows

A medication reminder is titled with the medicine and its strength; an appointment reminder is titled with the event. That is what makes it useful and it is also what makes it readable on a lock screen by anybody standing nearby. If that matters to you, your phone's own notification settings can hide the content of a notification until it is unlocked — that control belongs to Android rather than to LifeWell.