Writing the time in plain language

What it understands

Written the way people write times, rather than a syntax to learn:

Case does not matter. Neither does punctuation. The same reader handles the text you highlight for a right-click save and anything typed after rem in the address bar, so whatever works in one works in all three.

It shows you what it heard

As you type, Latr prints the full date and time it resolved to, underneath the field. It is deliberately the long form — weekday, date, time — rather than an echo of your words, because the failure worth catching is understood, but not as you meant it.

next friday on a Thursday is the classic one. Some people mean tomorrow, some mean eight days away. Latr shows you the date it picked; if it is the wrong one, say friday or pick from the calendar instead.

The one-tap chips

Under the field are four one-tap times: In 1 hour, Tonight (7pm), Tomorrow (9am) and Next week (9am, seven days out). A chip whose time has already passed today is not offered, so you are never given a button that would schedule something into the past.

You can replace them entirely with your own — Settings → New reminder defaults, "Your quick times". Adding even one replaces all four rather than appending to them: seven chips do not fit a popup, and the first custom entry is a statement that the built-ins were not what your week looks like.

Typing into a clock

Latr draws its own date picker rather than the browser's, so it can have a confirm button and never silently reject a half-typed value. Its clock is a list of quarter-hours — but you can type into it. 5, 5:47, 547, 17:47 and 5:47 pm all work, as does your language's own am/pm marker.

An off-grid time you type is kept as-is rather than snapped to the nearest quarter. An impossible one — 25:00 — is refused and marked, rather than quietly turned into something you did not ask for.

The other eight languages

The reader speaks German, English, French, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese, and it uses the one matching your browser's language. Anything else falls back to English.

This is why the example inside the empty field is translated in those nine and left in English everywhere else — a placeholder is a promise about what the field accepts, and a translated example the reader cannot parse would advertise input that silently fails.

When it does not understand

Nothing is saved and Latr says so. It does not fall back to a default time, because a reminder landing at an hour you did not choose is worse than being told the phrase did not work.

Three things usually fix it:

• Add a unit. in 20 is ambiguous; in 20 minutes is not.
• Use a weekday or a date rather than a description. end of the quarter is not a time; 31 march is.
• Use the calendar. The picker is right there, and for an awkward date it is faster than finding the phrasing.