How event and medication alarms work in NestBoard
The NestBoard team · 2026-09-10
What an alarm does
A push notification is easy to miss. For the things you truly cannot miss, NestBoard events and medication doses can ring a real alarm instead.
Full screen. Sound on even when the phone is on silent. Snooze and Dismiss buttons, just like the clock app.
If you set an alarm, NestBoard assumes you mean it. That is the whole point.
How to set one
Open an event in the calendar editor and turn on "Ring an alarm." Pick how far ahead it rings, from right at the start time up to two hours before. Thirty minutes before is the default.
All-day events cannot ring, because there is no start time to ring before.
For medications, turn on "Ring an alarm for each dose" in the medication editor. It rings at each scheduled dose time by default, or a little before if you prefer. As-needed (PRN) meds have no schedule, so no alarms. A dose you have already logged does not ring.
You can also ask Robin. "Set an alarm 30 minutes before soccer practice" turns it on for that event. "Turn off the alarm on soccer" switches it back off.
What happens on different devices
On Android, an alarm needs three things. The editor tells you which one is missing on the device you are holding.
First, notifications enabled for NestBoard. The ringing screen arrives through a notification, so with notifications off an alarm cannot ring at all.
Second, permission to show full-screen notifications. Android 14 and later no longer grant this automatically. Without it the alarm still makes a sound, but it arrives as a banner instead of taking over the screen, so there is no looping alarm tone and no Snooze or Dismiss buttons.
Third, the "Alarms and reminders" permission. Android 12 and later require this setting so an app can schedule exact alarms. Without it an alarm can arrive late.
When one of these is missing, the alarm row in the editor says so plainly and NestBoard sends you straight to the right settings screen.
On iPhone with iOS 26 or later, you get the real thing. NestBoard schedules your alarms through Apple's own alarm system, so they ring full screen with sound even in silent mode, with the same Snooze and Dismiss. The first alarm you set asks for permission with a system prompt.
iPhones on an iOS version before 26 do not have that alarm system, so NestBoard uses the strongest alert Apple allows. It plays a time-sensitive notification that breaks through Focus modes and Notification Summary at the exact alarm time. It plays a sound, but it follows the ring/silent switch, so flip the switch to ring if you need to hear it.
The editor tells you which kind your device gets.
Where alarms ring and who hears them
An event with specific people on it rings those people's devices. An event with nobody assigned rings the whole household.
Medication alarms ring the person taking the med, anyone sharing the bottle, and shared household devices like a tablet on the wall.
Alarms are scheduled on the phone itself, so they ring even with no internet connection, and they survive a phone restart. When an event is edited, moved, or deleted, the alarm follows along within seconds on every signed-in device that is online, including a tablet left on the wall that nobody ever closes. A device that was offline or asleep catches up the next time the app opens or comes back to the foreground.
Alarms ring in the Android app and the iPhone app. On the website, a kiosk, or an unsupported device the alarm option still saves and syncs, and the editor explains that the ringing happens on the phone and tablet apps.
Snooze, Dismiss, and quiet hours
Snooze gives you ten more minutes, as many times as you need. Dismiss stops it.
Alarms deliberately ignore quiet hours. Quiet hours still silence NestBoard's chimes and regular notifications, but if you set an alarm, NestBoard assumes you mean it.
If an alarm ever seems late, check that battery optimization for NestBoard is not set to restricted.
When you sign out
Signing out of NestBoard on a device clears the alarms that device had scheduled. So does requesting account deletion.
That matters on a tablet the whole family shares. Because alarms live on the device so they can ring offline and after a restart, one person's medication alarm would otherwise keep ringing for whoever picked the tablet up next.
Sign back in and your alarms are rescheduled on the next sync.