Troubleshooting — Forget Me Not manual

Which problem have you got?

Before changing anything, work out which of these it is. They have different causes and the fixes do not overlap.

What you saw	Go to
The reminder never appeared, even hours later	Nothing arrives at all
It appeared, but not until you picked the phone up	Reminders arrive late
It appeared on time, but made no noise	Reminders arrive silently
An Important one appeared in the tray instead of taking the screen	Important reminders behave like ordinary ones
It fired fine, but you cannot find it in a list	A reminder is missing from a view

Nothing arrives at all

Check these in order. The first one is the answer far more often than the rest put together.

1. Is the notification permission allowed?

This is the one permission the app cannot work around: without it, reminders are still kept and still fall due, but nothing appears. If it was skipped in the welcome guide, this is why.

It is a runtime permission, so it lives in Android's own settings rather than in the app. The quickest route back to it is Settings → Permissions → Show the welcome guide, which asks for it again on its own page — or find Forget Me Not in Android's app list and turn its notifications on there.

2. Is the reminder disabled?

A paused reminder is greyed on the itinerary with Disabled against it, and fires nothing. ⋮ → Enable puts it back.

3. Does the reminder actually have a notification on it?

Open it and look at the Notifications row. A reminder whose alerts have all been removed has nothing to fire. The occurrence panel — tap the reminder in Upcoming or the calendar — lists exactly what will happen and when, which is the quickest way to be sure.

4. Was it excluded from the schedule, or skipped?

Show On Upcoming Schedule being off does not stop a reminder firing — but a single occurrence that has been skipped will not notify. The occurrence panel says so, and Don't skip undoes it.

5. Has the phone's own battery manager stopped the app?

Some manufacturers — Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others — add their own app management on top of Android's, often more aggressive than the standard one. Look in Android's Settings for a per-app battery, "app launch" or "protected apps" screen and mark Forget Me Not as allowed to run in the background. dontkillmyapp.com documents what each manufacturer does.

Reminders arrive late

Late — particularly “not until I picked the phone up” — is almost always battery optimisation.

Android defers background work while the phone is idle. An app whose entire job is to wake up at a set time is exactly the kind of thing it defers, and a reminder due while the phone is in a pocket or on a bedside table may not arrive until the phone is next used.

Settings → Permissions → Battery optimisation. It should read “Unrestricted. Reminders can fire at the time they are set for.” If it reads “Restricted. Android may hold reminders back while the phone is idle”, tap the row and allow unrestricted use.

The single most useful setting in the app

If you change nothing else after reading this chapter, change that one. It is the commonest reason a reminder is late, by a wide margin.

On older versions of Android there is also an Alarms and reminders permission, which is what lets a reminder be set for the minute you asked for rather than for whenever Android next feels like waking the app. Newer versions grant it automatically and show no row for it.

Reminders arrive silently

The notification appears on time but makes no sound. In order of likelihood:

The channel's sound is set to Silent. Settings → Sound has a row for Notification reminders and one for Important reminders, each naming its sound and opening Android's screen for it. Android keeps sound and vibration with the channel, which is why it is set there rather than in the app.
The category has its own sound, and that one is silent. A category with Own notification sounds turned on ignores the app-wide setting entirely. Its channel is under a Category sounds group in Android's notification settings.
Several reminders fell due at the same minute. This is deliberate: one sound plays between them rather than one from each.
Do Not Disturb is on. Reminders wait until you unlock. If a category is genuinely urgent, mark it as an alarm category, which plays at alarm volume.
The volume is down. Notification volume and alarm volume are separate sliders on Android, and an alarm-category reminder uses the second one.

Important reminders behave like ordinary ones

Check this first. If Show important notifications as normal when phone unlocked is on, under Settings → Notifications, then this is the app doing as it was told: a reminder falling due while you are using the phone arrives as an ordinary notification rather than seizing the screen. Lock the phone or let it sleep and the same reminder takes the screen as before. It is the likeliest answer, and the quickest to rule out.

Otherwise, Android will quietly turn an Important reminder into an ordinary notification if the app has neither Display over other apps nor Full screen notifications. Nothing in Android reports that this has happened — the reminder simply arrives looking like any other.

The app watches for it and tells you, and offers to ask for the permission again. You can also check both directly under Settings → Permissions.

The two are told apart by whether the app said anything: it warns you when Android has taken a permission away, and says nothing at all about the setting, because you chose that one.

A reminder is missing from a view

Where it is missing	Why
Upcoming and the calendar, but it is on the itinerary	Show On Upcoming Schedule is off on that reminder. It still fires. This is for standing arrangements that would otherwise bury everything else.
Upcoming on future dates, but it is there today	Only Show On Today's Schedule is on.
The itinerary	The drawer is filtered to one category — tap All — or a search is still active, or the reminder's time has already passed today.
The Import/Export screen	Exclude From Import/Export is on.
Everywhere, after deleting a category	It is not gone. Deleting a category leaves its reminders with no category — look under All in the drawer.

Other things

“There's already a reminder with that name at that date and time.”

Two reminders cannot share a name and a moment. Change either and it will save. From Quick add, use Edit first to change one of them before saving.

An all-day reminder fired at midnight

That is intended: a due date is not an appointment, and the point of one is that you know as the day begins. If you want a civilised hour, add a notification at the time you want, or make it an ordinary timed reminder.

The calendar screens say there is nothing to work with

Either the calendar permission has not been given — the screen offers Allow access — or the device genuinely has no calendar, or none that can be written to. Add an account in Android's Settings, or make a local calendar in your calendar app. See Chapter 9.

A restore was refused

All three refusal messages end with “Nothing has been changed”, and mean it. Chapter 10 explains each one.

The app was reinstalled and everything is gone

Reminders live on the device and nowhere else, so uninstalling takes them with it. If you have a backup, restore it. If not, there is unfortunately nothing to recover — and the very next thing worth doing after setting the app up again is taking one.

Asking for help

If none of the above fits, write to support@sherwood-tech.co.uk. Four things make a report far quicker to act on:

The phone or tablet, and which version of Android is on it.
The app's version number, from the top of the drawer or from About.
What the reminder was set to — date, time, repeat, type, and its notifications.
What actually happened, and when. “It arrived at 09:40 instead of 09:00” is worth a great deal more than “it was late”.