How to set a repeating reminder on Android
Setting a repeating reminder is the easy half. The half that goes wrong is whether it fires, because Android is allowed to hold a reminder back to save battery, and it does that silently.
Setting one, in the apps you already have
Every Android phone has at least two ways to do this, and they behave differently.
- Google Calendar. Make an event, set it to repeat, and it arrives on every device signed into the account. Good for anything tied to a time and a date, and heavier than it needs to be for "take the tablets".
- Google Clock. An alarm that repeats on chosen days of the week. This is the one that reliably makes noise, because an alarm is treated by Android as something that must not be delayed. What it cannot do is repeat monthly, or every three days, or stop after twelve times.
- Google Assistant. Saying "remind me every Tuesday at six" works and is the fastest way in. The reminder then lives in Google's service rather than on the phone.
Why the reminder does not go off
This is the actual question behind most searches about Android reminders, and the answer is usually not the app.
Android puts apps it considers idle into buckets and defers their background work to save battery. A reminder scheduled for 09:00 can arrive at 09:40, or when you next unlock the phone, because the system decided the app could wait. Several manufacturers, and Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo and OnePlus are the ones people run into, add their own battery management on top that is more aggressive than stock Android's.
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Take the app out of battery optimisation.
Settings, Apps, the app, Battery, then Unrestricted. This is the single change that fixes most late reminders.
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Allow alarms and reminders.
From Android 12 an app needs specific permission to schedule an exact alarm. It is under Settings, Apps, the app, Alarms and reminders. If it is off, every reminder becomes approximate.
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Check notifications are not silenced.
A reminder that fired but arrived silently looks identical to one that never fired. Check the app's notification channel has a sound and is allowed to interrupt.
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On Samsung and Xiaomi, look for the second setting.
There is usually a separate list, named something like "Sleeping apps", "Never sleeping apps" or "Autostart", which overrides the standard Android setting. Stock Android has no equivalent, so instructions written for a Pixel will not mention it.
Reminders and restarts. Scheduled alarms do not survive a reboot on their own. Android clears them, and an app has to ask to be told the phone started so it can set them again. A reminder that went missing after an update or an overnight restart is usually this, not you.
On the device or in an account
Worth deciding once. A reminder in Google Calendar or Assistant is on every device you sign in on, and it is also in your Google account. A reminder held on the phone stays on the phone: it works with no connection, nothing about it is readable elsewhere, and it does not follow you to a new device unless you move it.
Neither is the right answer generally. Shared and scheduled things belong in a calendar. Personal, repetitive, faintly private things are the ones people are often surprised to find in their account history.
Making the reminder specific enough to act on
A repeating reminder that says "gym" gets dismissed on autopilot within a fortnight. One that says what to do next, at a time when doing it is possible, survives much longer. Set it for when you can act, not for when you first think of it, and write the next action rather than the topic.