---
title: "Reminders that arrive with your browser closed"
description: "Put a time on a task and TaskPocket tells you: in your browser with the tab shut, and on your iPhone. Free on every plan, and one reminder on each task."
canonical: https://taskpocket.io/features/reminders/
lastUpdated: 2026-09-11
---
1. [Home](https://taskpocket.io/)
2. [Features](https://taskpocket.io/features/)
3. Reminders

# A reminder that reaches a browser you have closed

Put a time on a task and TaskPocket sends you a notification at it. In a browser it arrives with the tab closed, over the same web push your operating system already runs. On an iPhone it arrives as a Time Sensitive notification. Free on every plan, one reminder per task.

By [Bohdan Stefaniuk](https://taskpocket.io/about/) Last updated 2026-09-11

## Why a browser tab usually goes quiet

A to-do list that lives in a browser has a habit of forgetting you the moment you close it. The tab was the whole program, so when the tab goes, so does anything that was going to happen at four o’clock. The usual answer is to install something: a desktop app, a menu-bar thing, a phone app whose only job is to be the part that interrupts.

That is a strange trade for a tool you chose because it ran in a browser. And it is the reason “does it remind me?” is the first question people ask about any web-first task manager, and the reason the honest answer used to be no.

Browsers have had the machinery to fix this for years. A push message goes to the browser vendor’s own service, and the browser wakes a small piece of the site to show a notification — with no tab open, and with the site’s own code doing none of the waiting. Few to-do apps bother. TaskPocket does.

## Putting a time on a task

A reminder is not a separate object you manage. It is a time on the date you already set. Open a task, open When, pick a day, and an Add Reminder row appears underneath it. Pick an hour and the task’s date now reads something like Tomorrow, 09:00.

You can also just type it. “Call the dentist tomorrow at 9” creates a task called Call the dentist, scheduled for tomorrow, with a nine o’clock reminder on it — the words come out of the title and the time becomes the reminder. The parser is a grammar rather than a language model, so the same sentence always produces the same task. There is more on that in [natural-language capture](https://taskpocket.io/features/natural-language-capture/).

The hour is wall-clock time in your account’s timezone, not the browser’s. Set nine o’clock at home and it is still nine o’clock when you open the same list on a laptop three timezones away. Daylight saving is resolved on the server against your zone, so the clocks changing overnight does not move your morning reminder.

## What happens when the time arrives

In a browser, a notification appears whether or not TaskPocket is open. Each browser is switched on separately, in Settings, because the permission belongs to that browser rather than to your account — turn it on at work and your laptop at home stays quiet until you turn it on there too. The browser asks you once, the first time you put a time on a task, which is the one moment the question explains itself.

On an iPhone, the app schedules the notification on the device itself, so it fires with no signal and nothing of ours in the path. It is marked Time Sensitive, which means it can come through a Focus. It is not an alarm: it respects Silent mode, and if your phone is silent, so is it.

Some browsers are built without a push service at all. In those, TaskPocket falls back to showing reminders while a tab is open and says so plainly in Settings rather than letting you assume otherwise. On an iPhone or iPad, Safari only supports web push for sites added to the Home Screen, which is Apple’s rule rather than ours.

## On a repeating task, you set it once

Put a reminder on a task that repeats and it stays with the series. Every Monday at eight means every Monday at eight — you are not re-adding it after each one, and completing an occurrence early does not lose the next reminder. The repeat engine is covered in [recurring tasks](https://taskpocket.io/features/recurring-tasks/), and all of it is free.

One deliberate limit: a reminder hangs off the start date, never off the deadline. A deadline in TaskPocket is a fact about the work, not a thing that schedules itself, and nothing fires when one arrives. If you want warning before a cutoff, set the start date a few days earlier and put the reminder there. That is the two-date model doing exactly what it is for, and it is explained at [start dates and deadlines](https://taskpocket.io/features/start-dates-and-deadlines/).

## The only thing we will ever send you

A reminder you set is the entire notification surface. There is no daily digest, no streak, no “you have 4 tasks due” at 8am, no re-engagement nudge two weeks after you stop opening the app, and no marketing push. If you set no reminders, TaskPocket never contacts you at all.

This is the same promise as the rest of the product rather than a setting: the app is a place to decide and review, and a notification you did not ask for is the opposite of that. It also means the switch in Settings is a real off switch, not a preference centre with nine categories in it.

The push itself is encrypted with keys your browser generated before it leaves our server, so the push service moves a sealed message it cannot open. It sees an address and a moment, never the name of your task. That is the web push standard doing its job, not a feature of ours, and it is worth knowing either way.

## Where this sits against the apps people compare it to

Every app here reminds you. The differences are how many alerts one task can carry, what can trigger them, and whether the web version does anything once you close it.

*Reminder behaviour compared across four task managers and TaskPocket*

| Feature | Todoist | TickTick | Apple Reminders | TaskPocket |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A reminder at a time you set | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes 1 |
| More than one reminder on a task | Unknown | Yes 2 | Yes | No 3 |
| Reminders on the free tier | Yes 4 | Yes 5 | Yes 6 | Yes |
| Triggered by a place, not a clock | Unknown | Unknown | Yes 7 | No 8 |
| Snooze a reminder that has fired | Unknown | Unknown | Yes | No |
| A reminder on a deadline, separate from the start date | Unknown | No 9 | No 10 | No 11 |
| Web app notifies with the tab closed | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | Yes 12 |

1. Free on every plan.
2. 2 per task on the free plan, 5 on Premium.
3. One per task.
4. Task reminders are listed on the free Beginner tier; custom reminders are Pro.
5. Capped at 2 per task.
6. Free, and already on the device.
7. Apple documents arriving and leaving a location.
8. Not built, and not planned.
9. There is no separate deadline field to hang one on.
10. One date field, doing both jobs.
11. Reminders attach to the start date only.
12. Web push, switched on per browser.

Each unknown is a cell where the vendor does not document the answer plainly and this site will not guess one. The last row is the honest shape of the whole page: it is the row TaskPocket wins, and it is also the row nobody else publishes an answer for, so read it as “we do this and we checked” rather than as “they don’t”.

The row that matters in the other direction is the second one. If you are coming from a tool where one task carries a reminder an hour before, one the day before, and one that keeps going until you deal with it, you will feel the difference immediately. TickTick publishes its limits and they are higher than ours. [Apple Reminders](https://taskpocket.io/alternatives/apple-reminders/) wins the location row outright and always will.

## What this doesn't do

- One reminder per task. Not two, and not an escalating series — if you need an alert an hour before and again the day before, this does not do it.
- Reminders attach to the start date. A deadline cannot carry one, so nothing fires as a cutoff approaches.
- No snooze. Once a notification has fired, it is a notification you have seen; there is no button to push it ten minutes out.
- No location reminders. "When I get to the office" is Apple Reminders territory, it is not built here, and it is not planned.
- Not an alarm. The iPhone notification can come through a Focus, but it respects Silent mode — a silent phone stays silent, so this is the wrong tool for something you cannot afford to sleep through.
- A reminder more than ten minutes late is skipped rather than delivered late. If our server is down over your nine o’clock, you do not get a pile of nine o’clocks at half past ten.
- Browser reminders need a browser with a push service, and each browser is turned on separately. On iPhone and iPad, Safari only supports this for a site you have added to the Home Screen.
- There is no native Android app yet, so on Android the reminder arrives in the browser or not at all.

## Questions people ask

### Does TaskPocket notify me if the browser is closed?

Yes, in a browser that supports web push, which is most of them on a desktop. The notification comes from your browser rather than from an open tab, so TaskPocket does not need to be running. Each browser is switched on separately in Settings, and it asks you once, the first time you put a time on a task.

### Are reminders free, or do I need Premium?

Free, on every plan, with no cap on how many tasks carry one. The deadline field and the Deadlines view are the parts of the date model that are Premium; the start date, the reminder on it, and the whole repeat engine are not.

### Can I put two reminders on the same task?

No. One task carries one reminder, at one time. TickTick allows two per task on its free plan and five on Premium, so if a layered set of nudges is how you work, that is a real reason to prefer it and worth knowing now.

### Will a reminder wake my phone if it is on silent?

No. The iPhone notification is marked Time Sensitive, which lets it come through a Focus, but it is not an alarm and it does not override Silent mode. If your phone is silent, the reminder is silent. For something that must cut through, use a real alarm or Apple Reminders.

### Can I get a reminder before a deadline?

Not on the deadline itself — reminders attach to the start date only. The intended move is to set the start date a few days before the cutoff and put the reminder there, which is what the two date fields are for: the deadline records when it is due, the start date decides when you look at it.

### Does a repeating task keep its reminder every time?

Yes. You set it once and it stays with the series, so every occurrence arrives with the same reminder on it. Completing one early does not lose the next one.

### Can the push service read my tasks?

No. The message is encrypted with keys your browser generated before it leaves our server, under the web push standard, so the service that carries it cannot open it. It sees the address it is delivering to and the moment it was sent, never the name of the task.

## Sources

1. [WebKit — Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS (the Home Screen requirement, iOS 16.4)](https://webkit.org/blog/13878/web-push-for-web-apps-on-ios-and-ipados/) checked 2026-09-11
2. [RFC 8291 — Message Encryption for Web Push (why the push service cannot read the payload)](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8291) checked 2026-09-11
3. [Todoist — pricing (task reminders on Beginner, custom reminders on Pro)](https://www.todoist.com/pricing) checked 2026-08-23
4. [TickTick — Premium comparison (2 reminders per task on free, 5 on Premium)](https://ticktick.com/upgrade) checked 2026-08-23
5. [Apple — Add dates or locations to reminders on Mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/reminders/add-dates-or-locations-to-reminders-remnd4b206fb/mac) checked 2026-09-01

Reminders are on the free plan. One per task, at a time you pick, with no card and nothing to configure.

## Related reading

- [Start dates and deadlines — two dates, two questions](https://taskpocket.io/features/start-dates-and-deadlines/) — When you plan to start and when it is actually due are different questions. Here is how the two dates work in TaskPocket, and which apps have both.
- [Recurring tasks that survive real life](https://taskpocket.io/features/recurring-tasks/) — Nth weekday, the last business day, stop after ten, skip one, and repeats counted from the day you finish. What each app can express, with sources.
- [Apple Reminders alternative for Windows and the web](https://taskpocket.io/alternatives/apple-reminders/) — Reminders is great at capture and weak at structure. An honest comparison, including the several places where Reminders is still the better choice.
- [Start dates and deadlines: how the two fields work](https://taskpocket.io/help/dates/) — The field called When in the app is the start date: it decides which day a task appears. The deadline is separate, schedules nothing, and is part of Premium.