07 – Notifications

In this chapter you set up reminders for events and tasks and learn how to react to them.

Adding a reminder

1. Open an event or a task for editing.
2. In the Reminder field, choose how long beforehand you want to be notified (e.g. 10 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day).
3. You can add several reminders per entry.
4. Save.

How reminders appear

At the due time, Aperio shows a notification – as a system notification and/or as a hint inside the app, depending on your settings. Optionally a sound is played.

In the notification you can:

• open the entry,
• dismiss the reminder (acknowledge it),
• or snooze it – the reminder returns after the chosen time.

Per-calendar default reminders

Besides the reminders on individual entries, you can set default reminders per calendar. They apply to events in that calendar that carry no reminder of their own – handy for subscribed or external calendars whose entries arrive without an alarm. Under Settings → Calendars, pick a calendar and set its default reminders there.

All-day events and birthdays

All-day events have no time of day, so a reminder isn’t fired “one hour before” (i.e. the previous evening) but at the day-carryover time – the same time as your day-start reminders. A lead time counts in whole days: “1 week before” fires seven days earlier at the day-carryover time.

The same applies to the automatically generated birthday calendars — and those remind you on the day itself, at the day-carryover time, without you setting anything up. A birthday calendar exists because you want to be told, so it starts switched on.

Under Settings → Calendars (on the phone via Reminders in the calendar list) you can change that: give it a lead time such as “1 week before”, add several reminders, or remove them all — an emptied list stays empty and the calendar goes quiet.

Cancelled events

Cancelled events (for example a meeting series withdrawn by its organizer) never trigger reminders — regardless of any setting. By default they stay visible in the calendar (like Outlook); you can hide them under Settings → General via Show cancelled events. When shown, a cancelled event is dimmed with its title struck through, and screen readers announce it with a trailing “cancelled”. Deleting a single occurrence of a recurring event removes that occurrence entirely — it does not linger as a cancelled row.

Notification sounds

You can choose which sound a reminder plays, on several levels — each one overrides the one above it:

1. Global default — Settings → Calendars → Notification sounds.
2. Per calendar / per task list — in the same settings panel, on each calendar or list row.
3. Per event / per task — in the event or task dialog (while editing an existing entry).
4. Per reminder — directly on a single reminder row.

Every level offers the same choices:

• System default — your operating system’s notification sound.
• Silent — a visual-only notification, no sound.
• Custom sound — import your own audio file (.mp3, .ogg, .wav, .m4a, .aac, .flac, up to 5 MB). Use Test to preview it and Remove to delete an imported sound.

Everything below the global level also offers Use default, which means “inherit the level above”. Imported sounds and your choices sync to your other devices (the audio file travels with the setting), so a reminder sounds the same everywhere.

Volume: Aperio deliberately has no in-app volume slider — use your operating system’s per-app volume mixer (Windows and macOS both have one).

Notification settings

In the settings under Notifications you define:

• whether system notifications are used,
• whether and which sound is played (see Notification sounds above),
• the default snooze duration,
• the default lead time for new events.

Note: For system notifications to appear, Aperio needs the corresponding permission from your operating system. You are asked for it the first time.

Screen-reader note: Reminders are announced through a live region, so you notice them even without a visible focus change. The “Open”, “Dismiss” and “Snooze” buttons are reachable with Tab and clearly labeled.

Running in the background (system tray)

So reminders fire even when the window isn’t open, Aperio can hide into the system tray instead of quitting. Under Settings → General:

• Minimize to the tray when closing – the close button hides Aperio instead of quitting.
• Minimize to the tray instead of the taskbar – the minimize button tucks the window into the tray.

Click the tray icon to bring the window back; use its menu to actually quit. Both options are off by default. If your system has no tray (e.g. GNOME without an AppIndicator extension), the toggles are disabled and the window behaves normally.

Launch at login

So reminders fire again after a restart without you opening Aperio by hand, turn on “Launch Aperio when I sign in” under Settings → General → Startup. Aperio then starts automatically once you log in to this computer. A second option, “Start minimized in the system tray” (on by default when a tray is available), controls whether the autostart launch opens a window or starts tucked in the tray — click the tray icon to bring it up. The settings apply to this device only; clear the checkbox to turn autostart off again.

Summary

You can create reminders, set their sounds and respond to them with dismiss or snooze. Next up is search.