Things may have seemed outwardly quiet for the last month or so, but that merely belies the head-down, push-till-it's-done headspace we've all entered here in the Handelabra-verse. We've taken in tons of really terrific feedback over the 100,000 download history of RE.minder and we did our best to boil it all down into a new an improved RE.minder experience. RE.minder 2 is fast approaching "finished" so I figured now might be a good time to detail some of what you can expect when it drops some time (hopefully) before the end of May.
Free for all
First of all, RE.minder will remain a free download from the app store and there are tons of great additions and enhancements coming, completely for free.
The first thing that will jump out at you is the new action bar that pops up when you tap a RE.minder. Look at all those pretty icons! What does it all mean? From left to right:
Share this RE.minder - With a single tap, you can now bundle up a RE.minder in an email and send it to anyone you like. If they have RE.minder installed, a single tap will set on their iPhone. Send it to a group to set a meeting.
Bug Me - We received a lot (like A LOT) of requests for a snooze function. Unfortunately, there are some very real limitations in Apple's local notification system that simply preclude the ability to add a real snooze functionality. Bug Me is the next best thing. Tapping on the bug will toggle the Bug Me function between "Off", "Every Minute" or "Every hour". Your RE.minder will now continue ringing at the interval you choose until you actively turn it off. This is also completely separate from our repeat settings (more on that later).
Delay - In RE.minder 1, a single tap on a fired RE.minder cleared it and sent it to History. Meaning 4 or more taps to set it again (as well as some hunting to find the right one). No more my friends! Tap the delay button and you'll be presented with a time Quick Picker right there in the action bar. 2 taps and you've reset the RE.minder. It even works on RE.minders that haven't fired yet if you just want to put them off a bit.
Advanced Edit - Even though we've worked to make it faster to reschedule a RE.minder, all the advanced options are still there. Just tap on on the edit button to change the title, add notes (see below), use more detailed scheduling, change the sound, change the Bug Me setting or add repetitions.
Clear/Send to History - And when you're all done with a RE.minder, be it fired or not, just tap here to remove it to your history.
What else is new?
You may have noticed a little color in our screenshots. Don't get your eyes checked, they are not deceiving you! RE.minders are now color coded based on how far out they are:
- Red - Overdue (now with a friendly readout to tell you by how much)
- Blue - Within the next 24 hours
- Green - Within a week
- Yellow - Within a month
- Orange - Longer than a month
This is a great way to get a feel for what your schedule looks like moving forward.
You also might have noticed that I mentioned Notes above. I'm going to go ahead and admit it right now, notes were an afterthought. When we put them in, we honestly didn't know how much people would use them, if at all. Well you've let us know - WE WANT BETTER NOTES!
We've listened and improved both the way you enter notes, and their visibility in the RE.minder list. Go ahead and write as much as you want in there!
There have also been many smaller improvements to the overall RE.minder experience including a smarter Quick Picker system that remembers what you type, a better History that makes reseting RE.minders quicker and easier, sound groupings and a lot of background intelligence that will make setting RE.minders super fast.
If that was the end of the story, we'd consider it a pretty solid update, but we haven't even started talking about the elephant in the room (or the ad at the bottom of the screen). That my friends, is RE.minder PRO but that's a post for another day!