Latr Latr
Add to Chrome

The life of a reminder

A reminder is in exactly one state at a time. Knowing which seven exist explains most of what you see in the popup — including why something says Missed when you were sure it worked, and why fired and done are not the same thing.

The seven states

The states a reminder moves through A reminder starts pending. Quiet hours can hold it and snooze can push it later, both of which return it to pending at a new time. When it fires it becomes either delivered or, if the browser was closed when it came due, missed. From either one you can mark it done — and you can mark it done straight from the queue at any point, without waiting for it to fire at all. Delivered, missed and done are all kept in history. Pending counting down Held quiet hours Snoozed you pushed it back It fires notification browser open Delivered on time was closed Missed delivered late Done you dealt with it marked done from the queue, any time
Dashed arrows return a reminder to Pending at a new time — its own schedule is never rewritten.
  • Pending — counting down. This is the queue you see under Upcoming.
  • Held — it came due inside your quiet hours, so Latr is waiting for the window to end. The row says held for quiet hours.
  • Snoozed — you pushed it back, from the notification or the row menu.
  • Delivered — it fired and you were there to get it.
  • Missed — it fired late, because the browser was closed when it came due. The notification says how late.
  • Done — you dealt with it. Reachable from the row menu at any point, including before it ever fires.
  • History — delivered, missed and done reminders are kept under Recent activity, for as long as you choose in Settings.

Fired is not done

These are two different questions and they come apart constantly. You book the flight the moment you save the reminder; the notification arrives at 10am and you actually do the thing at four. Whether Latr told you and whether you handled it are not the same fact, and for a long time the product could only report the first.

Mark as done is in the row menu. It stops the reminder firing and keeps the record, marked completed — the alternative was Delete, which throws the record away along with the obligation. On a repeating reminder it ticks off this occurrence and rolls the series forward, because one finished standup should not cancel every standup after it.

Done outranks every other outcome in the history and in the CSV export. A reminder can be dismissed and still done, or done days before it was ever going to fire, and the answer that matters is the one you gave.

Held is not late

This is the distinction that causes the most confusion, so it is worth stating directly: a delay you asked for is never recorded as a miss.

Quiet hours and snooze both move when this delivery happens. Neither touches the reminder's own schedule. A daily 2am reminder held until 7am is still a daily 2am reminder tomorrow — it does not quietly become a 7am one, which is what would happen if the hold rewrote the schedule.

History, and what it records

Recent activity in the popup keeps seven days by default — you can set it to 30, 90 or forever under Settings → Your data. For each delivery it records what you did about it:

  • Done — you said you had dealt with it. This outranks the rest.
  • Clicked — you opened it. The reminder did its job.
  • Dismissed — you closed the notification deliberately.
  • Ignored — the notification appeared and timed out on its own. Usually it means you were away from the screen.

The difference between dismissed and ignored matters: one is a decision, the other is a reminder that was never actually seen. If something important keeps showing as ignored, set its priority to high or critical so the notification waits for you instead of retiring itself.

Repeating reminders

A repeating reminder does not leave the queue when it fires. It rolls straight forward to its next occurrence and goes back to Pending, which is why it never appears under Recent activity as itself.

Latr still records each individual delivery, so “did my weekly reminder actually go off last Monday?” has an answer. Those entries are the log, shown alongside genuinely fired reminders.

Deleting and undo

Deleting is immediate and there is no confirmation dialog. Instead, an Undo appears for about six seconds, and restores the reminder exactly as it was, including its schedule.

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.