Sending a reminder to your calendar
A browser extension can only fire while the browser is running, and phones have no extensions. The calendar handoff is the answer: one click, and the reminder is somewhere that will find you anywhere.
Why this exists
Latr's notifications come from your browser, which means they arrive when your browser is running. Shut the laptop at six and a 10pm reminder waits until you open it again — it is delivered then, and labelled late, but late is still late.
There are no browser extensions on mobile, so there is no version of Latr that could reach your phone directly. Rather than pretend otherwise, Latr hands off to the thing that is already on your phone and already buzzes: your calendar.
Sending one
In the composer there is a sticky Also add to calendar option, so it is a habit rather than something you go looking for. Any existing reminder can be sent from its row menu.
For Google and Outlook a tab opens with the event already filled in — title, date, time
and the page address in the description — and you press save. For Apple Calendar and
everything else, an .ics file downloads and opens in whatever handles
calendar files on your machine.
Which one is used is a setting: Settings → Notifications → calendar service. Google was the only option for a while, which quietly left every Outlook user on the download-then-import path that nobody actually completes.
Google, Outlook, Apple
| Service | What happens |
|---|---|
| Google Calendar | A pre-filled event page opens. One save. |
| Outlook | The same, at Outlook. Personal and work accounts live on different hosts, so pick whichever you actually use. |
| Apple Calendar, Thunderbird, anything else |
An .ics file downloads. Double-click it.
|
Repeats survive the trip
A repeating reminder is handed over as a proper recurring event rather than as one entry on one morning. A daily standup arrives in your calendar as a daily standup.
Not every rule maps perfectly onto every calendar's own vocabulary, so check the first one you send of an unusual kind — the last working day of the month is the one worth glancing at.
The two copies afterwards
Handing off makes a copy. The reminder stays in Latr, still fires in your browser, and still reopens the page when you click it — the calendar entry is an extra, not a move.
That means editing one does not edit the other. If you reschedule the reminder in Latr, the calendar entry keeps its old time until you change it too. Two systems, no synchronisation between them, and that is what "handoff" means here rather than a limitation being glossed over.
What to hand off
Not everything. If every reminder went to your calendar you would have a calendar full of articles to read, which is how people stop looking at their calendar.
Worth handing off:
- Anything with a real deadline — a ticket sale, a form closing, a renewal
- Anything at a fixed clock time you must be present for
- Anything falling on an evening or weekend when the laptop is shut
Not worth it: reading, browsing, "look at this again sometime". Those are exactly what the queue is for, and a late delivery costs nothing.
Related: what happens when Chrome closes, share reminders via link.
Something unclear, or something Latr does that this page does not cover? Tell us — the page is easier to fix than the confusion it causes.