Task Reminders

A reminder is a little ping attached to a task. It surfaces at the moment you asked for, then waits for you to act on it. You can set one or several per task, change them whenever you like, and they travel with the task wherever it goes - across your own devices, across spaces, across backups.

PrimeTask gives you several ways to add a reminder, three places it shows up when it fires, and four things you can do about it once it does.

What you can do

How to add a reminder

Every route opens the same reminder window, so whichever you use, the choices are identical.

While you are typing

• Quick Add (⌘+⇧+A): Type your task, add remind: followed by a time spec, hit Enter. See Quick Add for the full syntax. Examples: Call dentist tomorrow 9am remind:30m, Pick up milk remind:30m, Standup 9am remind:5m.

From inside a task

• The task editor: Open a task and use the reminder control next to the duration setting. You can add, edit, or remove reminders without leaving the task.
• The task's own page: The Task Details Page has a reminder control alongside duplicate and delete, which also shows how many are already set.

From a list or a board, without opening the task

• Your task list: Switch on the Reminders column in column settings, then click a row to open the reminder window. See List View.
• A project's tasks: Tasks that already have reminders show how many. Click to change them, or hover a task with none and use the reminder control that appears with the other quick actions. See Projects Overview.
• Your board: Cards with reminders show how many, alongside the other things a card tells you about a task. Click to change them. See Board View.

From the action bar when a task is selected

• Select a task in a project's tasks, the Calendar, the Timeline, or a PrimeFlow canvas, and the bar that appears has a reminder control showing how many are set.

You can mix all of them - set reminders by typing for new tasks, then refine them later from wherever you happen to be looking.

Choosing when

Remind me in counts forward from the moment you set it, from five minutes up to a year ahead. This needs no due date, so it suits anything you want to come back to rather than finish by a deadline: chasing a reply in three weeks, revisiting a decision in six months.

Before due sets a reminder shortly ahead of the deadline, from five minutes up to two weeks. It only applies to tasks that have a due date, and it moves with the due date if you change it.

At a time picks a clock time. On a task with a due date that means that time on the due day, and on a task without one it means today, or tomorrow if the time has already gone.

A custom date and time covers anything the presets do not, for a reminder on an exact day at an exact time.

How to open the reminder controls inside a task

• Sidebar / list: Open any task from the Task List, Board, Calendar, or Project Tasks tab.
• Quick Add result: After Quick Add creates the task, click the task to open it.
• Search: Use Command Palette (⌘+K) → type the task name → open it.

The reminder control sits next to the duration setting near the top of the task. Click to open the picker; click any preset to add a reminder; the picker stays open so you can add several at once.

Things worth knowing

Three kinds of reminders cover every intent

You don't have to think about the underlying kinds - the picker shows you preset rows that map cleanly to what you mean:

• Before due - fires a chosen amount of time before the task's due date. Useful for "warn me an hour before the meeting". Follows your due date around: if you reschedule the task, the reminder follows.
• At a specific time - fires at a clock time. When the task has a due date, this anchors to the due day. When the task doesn't have a due date, it anchors to today (or tomorrow if the time has already passed).
• In a chosen amount of time from now - fires at a fixed moment computed when you set it. Useful for "ping me in 30 minutes while I'm prepping for this".

The picker shows whichever rows make sense based on whether the task has a due date.

When a reminder fires, it shows up in three places

Each reminder you set surfaces at its computed moment as:

• An entry in your in-app notification list
• A native desktop notification from your operating system (if you have desktop notifications turned on)
• An on-screen toast inside PrimeTask (if you have reminder toasts turned on)

The toast and the desktop banner are configurable in Notifications Settings, including which colour the toast uses.

Four actions when a reminder fires

The toast and the notification-list entry give you the same four actions:

• Dismiss - you're done with this reminder; it won't fire again, and the entry is cleared from the task
• Mark Done - completes the task in one click; the reminder is automatically considered addressed
• Show Task - opens the task; the reminder is considered addressed and won't ping you again
• Snooze 15m - fires the reminder again in 15 minutes (available on the toast as a hover-revealed control over the "Now" timestamp). A confirmation message tells you the snooze took effect.

Past reminders stay visible in the task as history

When you open a task that had reminders fire earlier, the picker shows them with a "Fired" label and a quieter style. Nothing removes them automatically (unless you explicitly dismissed them on the toast). This is intentional - it keeps a small audit trail of what you set up.

You can remove individual fired entries with the × on each row, or clear them all at once from the picker.

AI agents can set reminders for you

If you've connected an AI agent through Bring Your Own AI, the agent can set, list, snooze, and clear reminders on any task you can reach. Saying "Remind me about the John Doe call in 30 minutes" lands a real reminder on that task. Asking "What reminders do I have today?" gets you back a list sorted by fire time. The agent uses the same data as the in-task picker, so anything it does shows up where you'd expect.

There's no separate UI for this. Set reminders by typing, from inside the task, or by asking your agent, and they all behave the same way once they fire.

Some "before due" choices are unavailable on a task due soon

Before due choices only appear as available when they would still land ahead of you. On a task due in three days, a reminder a week or a fortnight beforehand would already have gone, so those choices are switched off. Click one anyway and PrimeTask tells you why rather than doing nothing.

Nothing is taken away from tasks with more time on them, and Remind me in, At a time and a custom date are never affected. That matters most on a task that is already late, where every before due choice has passed but you can still set a reminder to chase it.

Reminders follow due-date changes

If you set "30 minutes before due" and later push the due date back two hours, the reminder shifts with it. If you remove the due date entirely, the reminder is converted to a fixed moment using the original due time, so your original intent is preserved rather than silently dropped.

Reminders keep arriving once a task is late

A reminder does not stop just because the task went past its due date. That is usually the point: a task you asked to be chased about is the one you most want chasing once it slips.

If you would rather have the overdue notification on its own, without a second nudge about the same task, turn off Keep reminders after the due date in Notification Settings. Reminders on tasks with no due date are unaffected either way.

Two things do stop a reminder. Completing the task stops it immediately, and a reminder more than thirty days past its moment is no longer resurfaced, so an old one you never dealt with does not sit in your list forever.

Reminders in shared spaces are personal

If you set a reminder on a task that lives in a shared space, only your devices ping you. Other members can see the reminder in the task but they don't get the toast or the desktop banner. Each member is free to add their own reminder to the same task - yours stays yours, theirs stays theirs.

Backups and restores keep reminders intact

Reminders are stored on the task itself as plain data - there's no separate reminder database to back up. Whatever backup or sync method you use for tasks carries reminders along with them. Restore a backup on another Mac and your reminders fire at the same moments they would have on the original.

Common questions

Where to go next