Reminders formats

There are four supported types of reminders: one-time, recurring, countdown, and cron.

One-time reminders

The format of a non-recurring reminder for a specific date and time is as follows: <date> <time> <description>, where

  • date is in either day.month.year or year/month/day formats

  • time is in the format hour:minute

  • leading zeros in all the fields are optional

Omitting fields

You can omit the year, month, or the entire date field. They will fall back to the nearest possible point in the future.

If you omit the minute field, it defaults to zero.

Examples

  • 01.01 0:00 Happy New Year => notify on the 1st of January at 12 AM

  • 8 wake up => notify today at 8 AM if it is currently between 12 AM and 7:59 AM, otherwise notify tomorrow at 8 AM

  • 15 13 doctor appointment => notify on the nearest 15th day at 1 PM

Recurring reminders

The format for recurring reminders extends the format used for one-time reminders: <date_pattern> <time_pattern> <description>. Here are the details:

  • date_pattern can be specified in either date or date_from-date_until/date_divisor formats. You can include multiple date patterns separated by commas.

    • date_divisor can be expressed as <years>y<months>m<days>d or mon-tue,wed,thu,fri-sat,sun-like formats

  • time_pattern can be specified in either time or time_from-time_until/time_divisor formats (can specify multiple with , separator)

    • time_divisor is expressed in the format <hours>h<minutes>m<seconds>s.

Omitting fields

  • date_pattern

    • Omitting date_from or date_until removes the corresponding boundary

    • Omitting date_divisor defaults to a one-day interval (24 hours)

    • Omitting the entire field defaults to the nearest date

  • time_pattern

    • Omitting time_from or time_until removes the corresponding boundary

Examples

  • Notify every one and a half hours from 10 AM to 8 PM on weekdays:

    • -/mon-fri 10-20/1h30m take a break

    • On Monday-Friday at 10-20 every 1hour30mins take a break

  • Notify on every Sunday from the 1st of April to the 1st of May at 15:00:

    • 1.04-1.05/sun at 15:30 clean the room

    • 01.04-01.05 every Sunday at 15:30 clean the room

  • Notify on the 20th day of every month at 10 AM:

    • 20/1m 10 submit meter readings

Countdown reminders

Countdown reminders are set for a specified duration and follow <duration> <description> format.

  • duration is expressed as <years>y<months>mo<weeks>w<days>d<hours>h<minutes>m<seconds>s

Examples

  • 5m grab tea => notify in 5 minutes

  • 1d1h => notify in 25 hours

Nagging

Nagging makes a reminder behave like a small to-do item. When the reminder fires, the bot sends it with a Done button. If you do not press Done, the bot keeps re-notifying every nag_interval.

Use the optional suffix !nag_interval where nag_interval supports weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds: <weeks>w<days>d<hours>h<minutes>m<seconds>s.

Examples

  • -/1d 10:00!15m take medicine => fires daily at 10:00 and then repeats every 15 minutes until you press Done

  • -/mon-fri 12-18/3h!5m go out for a walk => fires at 12:00, 15:00, and 18:00

on weekdays, then repeats every 5 minutes until you press Done

Cron reminders

Format

Refer to cron expression syntax.

Examples

  • cron 55 10 * * 1-5 go to school (at 10:55 AM every weekday)

  • cron 0 14 1 * * pay rent => monthly on the 1st at 14:00

Reminders grammar

The grammar definitions can be looked up in the PEST reminders grammar.