A reminder arrived late

Why it happens

Latr asks your browser to wake it at a specific time. A browser that is not running cannot wake anything, so a reminder due at 10am on a shut laptop waits until the browser is next open, and is delivered then.

The usual causes, in order of how often they turn out to be the answer:

• The browser was fully closed
• The machine was asleep, or hibernating
• The machine was off
• The browser was restarted for an update while you were away

Latr says so in the notification's message. An unexplained 3pm notification for a 10am event reads as a bug; the same notification saying it is late reads as an explanation.

Held is not late

If the reminder came due during a quiet hours window, it was held on purpose and delivered when the window ended. That is working as designed rather than a miss, and the queue shows a held for quiet hours chip while it is waiting.

Same for a snooze you have forgotten making, which shows as snoozed.

Working out which it was

1. Open the popup and look at Recent activity. It keeps seven days of deliveries, with the time each actually arrived.
2. Check your quiet hours. Settings → Notifications. An overnight window you set months ago is easy to forget.
3. Check whether it fired at all. If nothing arrived rather than arriving late, that is a different problem — my reminder did not fire.

Several reminders coming due while you were away arrive as one digest notification rather than a stack, and the popup keeps a banner naming the ones you have not answered yet. The banner clears itself as you deal with them, so it stops nagging about reminders you have already handled.

Stopping it mattering

There is no setting that makes a browser extension fire while the browser is closed. Any product claiming otherwise is either running a server or is wrong. What there is:

• Hand the important ones to your calendar. One click, and your phone carries it — sending a reminder to your calendar. This is the real answer for a ticket sale, a deadline or anything at a fixed clock time.
• Leave the browser running. Sleep is usually fine; on most machines the browser resumes and Latr catches up within seconds of waking.
• Set the time for when you are likely to be at the machine. A 7am reminder on a laptop that opens at nine is always going to be a 9am reminder.

Late repeats do not drift

A daily 9am reminder delivered late at 11:20 is still a 9am reminder tomorrow. The next occurrence is worked out from the original schedule, never from when the delivery happened.

If it stepped from the delivery, a repeat you kept opening slightly late would slide later every day until it was arriving at midnight. See repeating reminders.