Is there a way to get Google Calendar reminders to act like Alarms?

Question

I miss many calendar reminders because they're just too subtle. I might put my phone down and walk out of the room for 5 minutes, missing the reminder, then come back and not touch my phone again for an hour; completely missing an important appointment.

If reminders worked like alarms, they would make their notification sound continuously (up to a point, like alarms: ~10 minutes), and take over the whole screen, until silenced. That would be preferable to me. Is there an app that can do this?

Answer 1

You can copy the mp3 file that you'd like (for example a 5-minute song) to the Notifications folder in your Android (at the same level that the Download folder). This can be done as well for ringtones (Ringtones folder) and alarms (Alarms folder). Now, go to calendar Settings, General and change the tone to your mp3 file.

Answer 2

If you want to stick with your Google Calendar as backend and frontend, you might wish to check Calendar Event Reminder. You can tell that app which calendars to look at, and to annoy you until you're going crazy. I almost guarantee you cannot miss such a reminder! I've used the app for quite some time, before...

I switched to a different calendar frontend: Business Calendar. Very configurable again, also concerning reminders: vibrates and makes "subtle noises" (I've told him so) until I lose my nerves and switch it off :)

There are probably a lot of similar approaches. But I know of no way to even come near to one of them without any 3^rd party tool being involved.

Answer 3

I found a free app, Calendar Event Reminder, that achieves the requirement at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sk.mildev84.reminder

Answer 4

I use TWO apps for this: [EDIT: I have stopped using both of these, see my other separate answer]

• Google Calendar events: Event Alarm Reminder for Google Calendar
  • One drawback of this one: No support of Outlook/Exchange calendars (yet) (August 2021)
• Outlook/Exchange events: "Event Reminder"
  • This app DOES support outlook
  • Isn't terribly reliable so I ONLY use it for outlook/exchange, hence both apps.

Also check out my separate answer on how to use a phone automation app.

Answer 5

What I do is to set an additional alarm in my standard android "Clock" app. Alarms have the option to give them "memo text", e.g. "Reminder for meeting boss in 10 min". So the alarm will act as your intruding and persistent reminder. The alarm has also the option "Auto-start app", where you can select after switching off the alarm the calendar to be opened, showing you that you have an appointment in x min.

Answer 6

Use an automation app like MacroDroid, Tasker, or AutoMate

I use MacroDroid for most things.

There are 2 strategies to detect upcoming meetings: Detect meeting reminder notifications

In macrodroid:

• Trigger: Notification - from (calendar apps) - anything
  • (for outlook, I filter by "\d\d:\d\d.*\d\d:\d\d" to match "09:00 - 10:00"
• If "events seen" variable contains notification text, abort macro
  • (this avoids problems with ongoing notifications over-triggering)
• Set variable "events seen" to "events seen" plus notification text
• Set alarm with notificatoin text, plus "#macro"

Specifically watch for calendar events Most automation apps can detect meetings/events, though it varies how hard it is to do. I found MacroDroid does well at this, with some caveats: you must create one trigger per calendar.

• Use MacroDroid
• Trigger on meetings 5 minutes before they begin.
  • Exclude all-day events
  • Create a similar trigger for each calendar you want alarms for
• Constraints: (either on the entire macro, or the trigger)
  • only during working hours plus buffer (7:00am to 5:30pm)
  • Or, only during waking hours (7am to 10pm)
• Action: Check variable with event title [calendar_title]. Abort if it contains words/phrases like "out of office/OOO/paid time off/PTO").
  • This would be an abort macro action with an action-level constraint based on variable pattern matching
• Action: Set an alarm 2 minutes in the future with title set to variable [calendar_title]. I found 1 minute ahead sometimes ended up on the next day.
• The drawback of this approach is it always sets alarms the same amount of time before a meeting.
• I usually use an alarm app that slowly increases in volume. AMDroid and Sleep As Android work well. I set them up so that single-occurence alarms auto-delete.