Reminders not working (as expected)?

DEVONthink
1

I have set a number of reminders to notes / documents, however they do not trigger at the required times ever. instead they “go off” pretty randomly (have not been able to recognize a pattern). is anyone else encountering the same problem and / or has found a workaround?

I have just migrated to a brand new copy of DT on the latest monterey release on an apple silicon macbook pro, however the issue has been present on previous hard- & and OS releases as well.

2

Did you enable the actions in Preferences > General?

3

yes, I have…at least I hope this is what you are referring to…:slight_smile:

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4

A screenshot of the reminder would be useful. Do they work after disabling sync?

5

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two examples of different reminders triggering randomly (as stated they all do). am syncing via bonjour - will disable and experiment and let you know if the behaviour changes…

thanks for looking into this!

6

The exact date/time might vary if the computer isn’t awake or DEVONthink not running. In addition, notifications are usually only shown if the app is inactive (but running). An alert would be a more reliable & obvious test.

7
  • DT is running continuously and the machine is typically up 16h a day…
  • alarms do not trigger on time regardless of the method (alert, notification, opening externally - I have tried them all…:-)…)
  • just tried an alert with disabled sync as per your suggestion. unfortunately the same result: it does not trigger (on time). based on experience I would guess it will trigger a some random point in the future…
8

Which version of DEVONthink & macOS do you use?

9

DT 3.8 &
MacOS 12.1

10

And completely new reminder does not work either (just tried this successfully over here)? Or did you already try that?

11

very strange…the one I tried as an alert with disabled sync (see above) was a brand new one…how are these alerts implemented? like cron jobs? is there a way to “look under the hood” and verify?

the only thing (although a very wild guess) that comes to mind as unusual for my setup is english as the OS language, but region austria with german keyboard, but I cannot see any connection there…

12

The scheduling is completely done by DEVONthink, no external task or system process is required.

13

It seems I have just come across the solution: in my setup of DT there is a smart rule called “Reminders” (screenshot see below), which I believe was installed automatically (at least I do not recall installing it). it seems this smart rule is colliding with the reminder (triggers) defined in the inspector pane. at least the reminders have triggered as configured since I have removed the smart rule…

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14

It’s automatically installed but the Cancel action is not part of this default smart rule.