Forget Me Not
User manual · Chapter 3
Quick add
One line, typed or spoken, and the app works out the rest — then shows you what it understood before it saves a thing.
How it works
Quick add is the fourth button on the bar at the foot of the screen. Type a sentence into the box, or tap the microphone and say it.
Nothing is saved until you tap Add. Until then the preview is just a reading of your sentence, and it changes as the sentence does.
The “Understood as” panel
This is the part that matters. The app never guesses silently — it lays out exactly what it took from your words, in the same rows you would have filled in by hand:
- Name — the sentence with the timing words taken out.
- Category — where it will be filed.
- Date and Time — when it will fall due.
- Repeat — if the sentence implied one.
- Type — Notification, or Important if you asked for an alarm.
Three buttons sit under it:
- Add saves it as shown, and confirms with “Added — Put the kettle on, 15 Aug 2026, 5:00 PM”.
- Edit first hands everything it understood to the full editor, so you can add a location, a field or a second alert before saving.
- The ✕ beside the box clears what you wrote and takes the preview with it.
What it can understand
Ordinary English, written the way you would say it. A few hundred phrasings are covered; these are representative rather than exhaustive.
| What you say | What you get |
|---|---|
| remind me to put the kettle on at 5pm | Put the kettle on — today at 17:00 |
| on Thursday book an MOT for the Skoda | Book an MOT for the Skoda — next Thursday |
| remind me in 20 minutes to check the oven | Check the oven — twenty minutes from now |
| every Monday put the bins out | Put the bins out — next Monday, repeating weekly |
| dentist at half past nine tomorrow | Dentist — tomorrow at 09:30 |
| pay the gas bill on the 1st of next month | Pay the gas bill — the 1st of next month |
| take the tablets every day at 8pm | Take the tablets — 20:00, repeating daily |
| ring mum at quarter to six | Ring mum — 17:45 |
| in a couple of hours check the roast | Check the roast — two hours from now |
| set an alarm to get up for work at 8am | Get up for work — 08:00, filed under Alarms, marked Important |
Two conventions are worth knowing:
- A time that has already gone today moves to tomorrow. Ask at four in the afternoon for something at nine and you will get nine tomorrow morning, not nine this morning.
- A bare hour is read as the next sensible one. “at 8” means whichever eight o'clock is coming, and the preview says which one it settled on — which is exactly why the preview is there.
Give a sentence only a time and no task — “at 6pm” — and it is saved as A Quick Reminder at that time, on the reasonable assumption that you will know what you meant.
Alarms
If the words mention an alarm, the reminder is treated as one: filed under the category named as the alarm category in Settings, and marked Important so that it interrupts. An alarm that waits politely in the notification tray is not an alarm.
If you would rather alarms were filed like anything else, set Settings → Defaults → Alarm category to None.
Dictating instead of typing
The microphone button beside the box hands over to your phone's own speech recognition. Where the phone can do the listening itself the words never leave it, and this app records nothing and keeps nothing either way.
If the microphone permission has not been given, the app says “Dictation needs permission to use the microphone.” If the phone has no speech recogniser or no language pack, it says that instead. Typing is unaffected in either case.
When it cannot work it out
Quick add would rather say it does not know than save something wrong.
| What it says | What to do |
|---|---|
| No date understood | There is no time or date in the sentence it can act on. Add one — “tomorrow”, “at 5pm”, “on the 3rd” — or use Edit first and set it in the editor. |
| You already have a reminder with that name at that date and time. Use Edit first to change either. | The same sentence has been added twice. Change the wording or the time, or open it with Edit first. |
| Choose a category above, or set one in Settings under Quick add category. | The quick add category has been set to None. Point it at a category under Settings → Defaults. |
Which category it goes in
Quick add does not stop to ask, so it has to be told in advance. Two settings under Settings → Defaults decide:
- Quick add category — where everything from this screen is filed. A new install creates a category called Quick Add and points this at it, so the screen works the first time you use it.
- Alarm category — where anything mentioning an alarm goes instead. A new install creates Alarms for the purpose, and marks it as an alarm category so its reminders can be given a tone from the Alarms folder and played at alarm volume.
Both are ordinary categories once made. Rename them, re-icon them, point the settings somewhere else entirely — nothing goes looking for them by name afterwards.