Technology and Science14 August, 20262 min read
Marco Arment Launches Unforgetful App To Replace Apple Reminders For Snooze-Procrastinators
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Marco Arment released Unforgetful, a new reminders alternative for Apple Reminders. It uses persistent notifications and flexible snoozing to curb procrastination.
Unforgetful targets snooze failures
Independent developer Marco Arment, known for creating Overcast and Instapaper and for serving as Tumblr’s chief technology officer, has launched Unforgetful as an alternative to Apple’s Reminders for people who tend to procrastinate.
TechCrunch says the iOS and Mac app works with the current Reminders database while addressing issues Arment described in his announcement on Friday, including how the snooze feature worked and how accidentally dismissing a reminder could lose it altogether.
Arment said, “Siri, for all of its faults, has always been very good at creating tasks in Apple’s Reminders app… The Reminders app, though, doesn’t fit me at all,” and he added, “I don’t like how it looks, how it works, or how it’s organized. Hell, I don’t even like its icon. There’s nothing about it I like. So I never open it.”
Unforgetful is designed so notifications “will always repeat — even if you miss them or dismiss them — until the task is actually done and deleted,” and it also revamps snoozing so intervals scale as a user keeps postponing.
Persistent nudges and simple UI
In TechCrunch’s description, Unforgetful keeps things fairly simple by offering “no tags, different views or modes, or other organization tools to learn,” while still aiming to make it harder for reminders to slip away. Arment’s approach centers on repeatedly sending notifications about unfinished tasks, so if a user misses or dismisses a notification, “the reminder will appear again and continue repeating until the task is completed and removed.”
The app also adjusts snooze intervals based on how many times a person has postponed a particular task, with the goal of reducing the chance that a task gets lost among dismissed or unnoticed notifications. TechCrunch adds that the snoozing intervals are designed not to overwhelm users with multiple tasks at the same time, which it says could lead someone to freeze and do nothing at all.
Integration, pricing, and availability
Unforgetful is not positioned as a replacement for Apple’s underlying Reminders system, because it “actually works with the same data, allowing users to continue creating tasks with Siri and move between Unforgetful, Reminders, and other compatible apps without importing or exporting anything.” 9to5Mac says the app is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it requires a subscription after a one-month free trial, with one subscription covering all three platforms.
Across the coverage, the subscription price is $19.99 per year, and Columna Digital specifies that Unforgetful is available for iOS and Mac with a cost annual of $19.99. Columna Digital also says Unforgetful includes “un micrófono integrado para grabar recordatorios por voz” and “una variedad de widgets que pueden ser colocados en la pantalla de bloqueo y el centro de control,” while TechCrunch says it ships with its own in-app microphone for voice reminders and a full suite of widgets for the Lock Screen and Control Center.