Reminders and Pomodoro

Reminders on your phone are nice, but they’re tied to the phone. Via Notifly they arrive on all your devices at once: phone, work laptop, home desktop.

One-time reminder via at

echo 'notifly-send "🔔 Meeting in 5 minutes" "Zoom: ..." 8' | at now + 25 min

Convenient wrapper:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# ~/bin/remind   — `remind 30m "Tea is ready"`  /  `remind "20:00" "Call mom"`
WHEN="${1:?when}"; shift
MSG="${*:?message}"
echo "notifly-send '🔔 $MSG' '' 6" | at "$WHEN"

remind 25m  "Coffee"
remind 17:30 "Leave to pick up the kid"
remind "tomorrow 9am" "Drop off the documents"

Pomodoro timer

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# ~/bin/pomodoro   [WORK_MIN] [BREAK_MIN] [CYCLES]
set -eu
WORK=${1:-25}; BREAK=${2:-5}; N=${3:-4}

for ((i=1; i<=N; i++)); do
    notifly-send "🍅 Pomodoro $i/$N" "Work for $WORK min." 5
    sleep $((WORK*60))
    notifly-send "☕ Break" "Rest for $BREAK min." 5
    sleep $((BREAK*60))
done
notifly-send "🏁 Pomodoro finished" "$N pomodoros done." 6

pomodoro          # 4 × (25/5)
pomodoro 50 10 3  # 3 × (50/10)

Regular reminders via cron

# Weekdays at 13:00 — lunch
0 13 * * 1-5 ~/bin/notifly-send "🍽 Lunch" "" 5

# Every hour — stand up and stretch (work hours only)
0 10-18 * * 1-5 ~/bin/notifly-send "🚶 Stand up and stretch" "" 4

# Sunday 21:00 — plan the week
0 21 * * 0 ~/bin/notifly-send "📅 Plan the week" "" 6

Quiet vs loud reminders

Control behavior via priority:

When	Priority	Effect
“Stand up”	1–3	silent, badge only
“Lunch”	4–5	standard sound
“Meeting in 5 minutes”	7–8	loud, bypasses DND according to OS rules
“THE PLANE IS TAKING OFF”	9–10	maximum, separate sound

See the priority table.

Windows: schtasks + PowerShell

The equivalents of at and cron on Windows are schtasks.exe and Task Scheduler. It is assumed that the Send-Notifly function is already loaded in the PowerShell profile (see the instructions).

One-time reminder

C:\scripts\Remind.ps1

param([Parameter(Mandatory)] [string]$When,
      [Parameter(Mandatory)] [string]$Message,
      [int]$Priority = 6)

# When: "25m", "2h", "20:00", "2026-04-23 14:00"
$target = if ($When -match '^(\d+)m$') {
    (Get-Date).AddMinutes([int]$Matches[1])
} elseif ($When -match '^(\d+)h$') {
    (Get-Date).AddHours([int]$Matches[1])
} else {
    [datetime]$When
}

$taskName = "Notifly Remind " + (Get-Date).Ticks
$cmd = ". `$env:USERPROFILE\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Notifly.ps1; " +
       "Send-Notifly -Title '🔔 $Message' -Priority $Priority"

$Action  = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "powershell.exe" `
    -Argument "-NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -Command `"$cmd`""
$Trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Once -At $target
$Settings = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -DeleteExpiredTaskAfter (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 5)
Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName $taskName -Action $Action -Trigger $Trigger -Settings $Settings | Out-Null
Write-Host "Will remind at $($target.ToString('HH:mm yyyy-MM-dd')): $Message"

Usage:

.\Remind.ps1 -When "25m"   -Message "Coffee"
.\Remind.ps1 -When "17:30" -Message "Leave to pick up the kid"

Regular reminders via schtasks

# Weekdays at 13:00 — lunch
schtasks /Create /TN "Notifly Lunch" /SC WEEKLY /D MON,TUE,WED,THU,FRI /ST 13:00 `
    /TR "powershell.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -Command `". $env:USERPROFILE\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Notifly.ps1; Send-Notifly -Title '🍽 Lunch' -Priority 5`""

# Every hour 10–18 — stretch
schtasks /Create /TN "Notifly Stretch" /SC HOURLY /ST 10:00 /DU 08:00 /K `
    /TR "powershell.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -Command `". $env:USERPROFILE\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Notifly.ps1; Send-Notifly -Title '🚶 Stretch' -Priority 4`""

Pomodoro in PowerShell

C:\scripts\Pomodoro.ps1

param([int]$WorkMin = 25, [int]$BreakMin = 5, [int]$Cycles = 4)
. $env:USERPROFILE\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Notifly.ps1

1..$Cycles | ForEach-Object {
    Send-Notifly -Title "🍅 Pomodoro $_/$Cycles" -Message "Work for $WorkMin min." -Priority 5
    Start-Sleep -Seconds ($WorkMin * 60)
    Send-Notifly -Title "☕ Break" -Message "Rest for $BreakMin min." -Priority 5
    Start-Sleep -Seconds ($BreakMin * 60)
}
Send-Notifly -Title "🏁 Pomodoro finished" -Message "$Cycles pomodoros done." -Priority 6

Benefits

• The same reminder on all your devices simultaneously.
• The flexible at syntax — far more powerful than a calendar.
• No third-party todo service required — cron/at are already on the system.

What to improve next

• TUI on top of at -l: view scheduled reminders.
• Voice “remind me in 2 hours” syntax — integrate with local STT.
• Integration with calendar (*.ics → cron job).