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  "path": "/article/4164435/android-reminders-app.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-29T09:45:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.computerworld.com",
  "tags": [
    "Android, Mobile, Mobile Apps, Productivity Software",
    "my free Android Intelligence newsletter",
    "Ruff Reminders",
    "in the Play Store",
    "Ruff Writing app",
    "my must-have Android widgets",
    "Android productivity app",
    "Google Keep",
    "policy"
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  "textContent": "Sometimes, the hardest part about getting stuff done is simply remembering what you have to do — and when.\n\nAnd ironically, lots of the tools that exist to help us juggle our endless array of incoming tasks only seem to make it even _more_ overwhelming. Truly, it doesn’t take much for the very act of managing your tasks — or maybe even just figuring out the best _way_ to do it — to become a chore in and of itself.\n\nLike many perpetually perplexed plebeians, I’ve exerted far too much energy on the impossible-seeming task of finding a system for _tracking_ tasks that (a) actually works — and (b) doesn’t feel like a burden of its own. I’ve gone through more tasks and reminders systems than any sane person should ever encounter in a lifetime.\n\nAnd lemme tell ya: At long last, I’ve encountered one that’s the perfect blend of simplicity and power.\n\nIt’s a brand new, off-the-beaten-path Android app you probably haven’t heard of but that absolutely should be on your radar. It’s both easier and more effective to use than most of the big-name tasks apps out there right now — and it _almost_ , dare I say, even makes managing your to-dos enjoyable instead of exhausting.\n\nLemme show ya how it works.\n\n**[Keep the knowledge coming with** my free Android Intelligence newsletter**— three new things to try every Friday and my Android Notification Power-Pack as a special welcome bonus!]**\n\n## **A new gold standard for Android reminders**\n\nMy fellow memory-challenged marsupial, allow me to introduce you to the amusingly named Ruff Reminders.\n\nRuff Reminders is an Android-first creation that’s only been in the Play Store for a matter of hours now — though I’ve had the opportunity to use it during its development for the past couple of months, as it’s progressed from a, well, _rough_ framework into a polished and well-rounded place for storing all of your tasks both personal and professional and ensuring you never forget anything.\n\nIf the Ruff name sounds familiar, by the way, you might be thinking of the similarly themed Ruff Writing app — which puts a simple scrolling scratchpad right on your home screen for on-the-fly thought storing. I’ve featured it as one of my must-have Android widgets for some time now.\n\nRuff Reminders comes from the same source — an indie Android app developer named Bardi Golriz — and it exists as a perfect companion to its sibling’s scratchpad concept.\n\nSo let’s get into it: When you first open up Ruff Reminders, you’re greeted with a simple screen showing you the current day and a prompt to add any new reminders you need into the mix. The idea is that your focus belongs on the here and now — and starting with what you need to do _today_ is the best way to actually get your tasks accomplished.\n\nRuff Reminders always starts you with a view of your tasks for the current day.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nCreating a new task is as easy as tapping the “quick entry” prompt toward the top of the screen and typing. You can also use the plus icon in the lower-right corner of the screen for a more elaborate and detail-oriented task creation mechanism — and that’s where some of Ruff Reminders’ most impressive powers come into play.\n\nTo wit: For any task you create, you can schedule yourself a reminder for…\n\n  * A specific date and time\n  * A _dynamic_ date or time — as in every Monday, every weekend, the first day of each month, and so on\n  * And (drumroll, please…) a specific _location_ — if, say, you want to be reminded about something when you get to the office, when you get home, or maybe even when you walk into a particular store or business\n\n\n\nYou can set all sorts of different reminders, including ones based on your physical location.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nThat last one in particular is a true treat to see. Like many Android-appreciating animals, I’ve been irked by Google’s ongoing retirement of location-based reminders all across the platform — first within the old Google Assistant system and then more recently within Google Keep as well. Ruff Reminders handily fills that void while offering a whole lot of other enticing extras that Assistant and Keep never provided.\n\nFor instance: For any location-based reminder, Ruff Reminders gives you the option to have a task pop up when you reach whatever location you specify either within a certain specific timeframe or anytime — and to have that reminder exist only once or as a recurring thing, _every_ time you come or go from the location in question.\n\nOn that latter point, you can also set the reminder to trigger when you arrive at your chosen location _or_ when you leave it — and you can choose exactly how wide of a radius the app uses to identify the spot — both of which add a whole other layer of flexibility and potential usefulness into the feature.\n\nRuff Reminders’ location reminders are especially versatile and powerful.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nAnd all of _that_ is still just the start.\n\n## **Remembering — and beyond**\n\nOnce you have tasks created, Ruff Reminders really does work to make sure you remember ’em. In addition to setting all of your own preferred reminder patterns for each new task you create, you can tell the app to _always_ nudge you about still-pending tasks for the present day at specific times as well as to keep “chasing” you with more prominent alarms — even _multiple_ alarms, if you want — for items you haven’t finished.\n\nAll of those options exist within the dog-shaped Ruff icon in the lower-left corner of the screen:\n\nwidth=\"1024\" height=\"919\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">Ruff’s “nudges” and “chases” add in even more flexibility and reliability with making sure you never forget anything important.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nOnce you’ve started a task, one tap on its line tells Ruff Reminders that it’s in progress and marks it accordingly. Another tap starts a full-screen timer (for any length you choose) to help you actually _focus_ on the task. And pressing and _holding_ the task marks it as finished.\n\nYou can also double-tap to reset an item’s status, if such a need ever arises.\n\nMarking a task as in progress (left) exposes the option to begin a full-screen focus timer (right), if you want.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nIf something _does_ still manage to slip by without getting completed, it’ll move down to the app’s command bar, at the bottom of the screen — where it shows up inside a red box with the number of unfinished past tasks front and center.\n\nThe Ruff Reminders command bar shows you how many missed tasks are still active and pending.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nYou can always tap that box to revisit and reschedule any missed tasks — or you can find any past task via the app’s swipe-up-from-the-bottom search system. But even more helpful are the ongoing reminders the app will keep bringing front and center whenever you tell it to keep chasing you about any particular item.\n\nTapping the double up arrows on a missed task moves it right back into your current “today” view.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nWhat else? Let’s see — for any items you set as “ongoing,” Ruff will create a persistent notification so you can easily see what’s lingering on your list. And as you’d expect for any serious Android productivity app, Ruff Reminders has a widget that lets you look at _all_ your tasks for the current day and add new tasks right then and there, on your home screen, without ever having to open anything up.\n\nBetween Ruff Reminders’ persistent notification of ongoing tasks and its home screen widget showing today’s tasks, you’ve got no shortage of ways to keep important stuff front and center.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nFor the true productivity-obsessed power-user nerds among us, Ruff Reminders also has a whole host of step-saving gestures built into its interface. Like all of the app’s more advanced options, you absolutely don’t _have_ to mess with ’em if you don’t want to — but if you’re the type of person who likes learning shortcuts and flying around your phone with taps and swipes, you’ll be delighted by all the possibilities this unlocks.\n\nThe more you use it, the more thoughtful and useful little touches you keep discovering — again, if and _only_ if you want to explore those types of options.\n\nGestures galore await for the shortcut adorers among us.\n\nJR Raphael, Foundry\n\nWhat’s most interesting to me about Ruff Reminders is the space it fills between the everything-style, intensive-need to-do apps out there — things like Todoist or even all-purpose productivity tools like Notion, which are great for the right type of purpose and person but can be overwhelming overkill for more casual task tracking — and the _super_ -simple, at times _too_ -limited apps like Google Keep, which are fine for basic info-dumping but lacking in more powerful task management and reminder magic.\n\nRuff Reminders manages to be both simple _and_ effective — an often overlooked middle-ground for those of us who want to track tasks and remember stuff in a way that goes beyond the most barebones basic approach but that doesn’t require an entire intricate platform to do it.\n\nOh, and as far as privacy goes, Ruff Reminder’s policy on that front is also refreshingly simple: It doesn’t collect or process any personally identifiable information. Period.\n\nThe app doesn’t have ads, either. Instead, it allows you to use its most fundamental setup for free and offers a paid subscription for its full set of features — three bucks a month or $20 per year, at the moment, with the latter price set to bump up to $30 after a while. (That pricing does also vary by country, so the rates will be slightly lower in certain parts of the world.)\n\nFor now, all _you’ve_ gotta do is try it out and see if it works as well for you as it has been for me.\n\nAnd if you need a helping hand to remind you, I know just the app to get the job done.\n\n_Increase your Android intelligence quotient with_ my free Android Intelligence newsletter_**** — three new things to try every Friday and my free Android Notification Power-Pack today._",
  "title": "Android reminders, reinvented"
}