Reminders

A reminder is an announcement that plays on one or more of your Speakers at a set time. It can play once (“tomorrow at 15:30”) or repeat on chosen days (“every weekday at 08:15”).

Each reminder can have:

a message for Alexa to say, with variables such as {VM.TIME.TEXT12},
a sound that plays before the message,
a voice,
a Screen to show on Echo Show, Echo Spot and Fire TV while it plays,
a countdown: announcements before the time and a spoken finale that ends exactly on it.

Create a reminder

In the console, go to Reminders and click Add Reminder.
Give it a name and type what Alexa should say.
Tick the speakers it should play on.
Choose Once and pick a date and time, or Repeat and pick a time and the days.
Optionally open Sound, voice and screen to add a sound, pick a voice or show a screen.

Times are in the timezone set in Settings. If you change your timezone, repeating reminders keep their local time (08:15 stays 08:15 in the new timezone).

Use the On / Paused button to pause a reminder without deleting it.

What happens when a reminder plays

Each speaker on the reminder plays it. Every speaker counts as one request against your plan’s monthly limit, like any announcement.
If two or more reminders are due at the same moment on the same speaker, they play one after the other as a single announcement.
One-off reminders are removed once they’ve played. Repeating reminders move on to their next day.
Every reminder that plays shows up in Usage with a Reminder label.
If Voice Monkey couldn’t play a reminder within 10 minutes of its time, it skips it rather than playing it late.

Countdowns

Turn on Countdown in a reminder to build up to its time. It’s ideal for getting the kids out of the door, the end of screen time, or the start of a game.

A countdown has two parts:

Announcements before the time, e.g. 30, 15, 10, 5, 2 and 1 minutes before. Each has its own message and sound. The sounds get more urgent as the time gets closer: Ding, then Bell, then Buzzer.
A finale (on by default) that counts the last 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds out loud, with a tick each second and a sound exactly on the reminder’s time. Alexa then says the reminder’s message. The numbers are spoken in your Echo’s language and the reminder’s voice. With one of your own voices, the message uses that voice and the numbers use its Alexa fallback voice.

Pick a preset to start from, then change any announcement:

Preset	Announcements before the time
Gentle	1 hour, 30, 15 and 5 minutes
Standard	30, 15, 10, 5, 2 and 1 minutes
Intense	15, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 minutes

A morning school run at 08:15 with the Standard preset plays “30 minutes until School run.” at 07:45, “15 minutes until School run.” at 08:00, and so on. Just before 08:15 Alexa counts “10, 9 … 1”, the air horn sounds at 08:15:00, and then she says “Time to go!”.

On Echo Show, Echo Spot and Fire TV, the reminder’s name and a live countdown to its time show throughout, unless the reminder has its own Screen.

Write announcements with these placeholders:

Placeholder	Says
`{VM.COUNTDOWN.TIME_LEFT}`	The time left, like `10 minutes` or `1 hour and 30 minutes`
`{VM.COUNTDOWN.MINUTES_LEFT}`	The whole minutes left, like `10`
`{VM.REMINDER.NAME}`	The reminder’s name
`{VM.REMINDER.TIME}`	The reminder’s time, like `8:15 AM`

The default message is {VM.COUNTDOWN.TIME_LEFT} until {VM.REMINDER.NAME}.

Good to know:

Each announcement counts as one request per speaker. The finale and the reminder’s message together count as one. The Standard preset with a finale uses 7 requests per speaker each time it runs; the console shows the total as you build it.
A reminder can have up to 12 announcements, between 1 minute and 12 hours before its time, at least 1 minute apart.
If a reminder is created after some of its announcements’ times have passed (for example, 10 minutes before a reminder with a 30-minute announcement), those are skipped. An announcement that couldn’t be played within 2 minutes of its time is skipped too, so you never hear “10 minutes” when it’s actually 5.
The finale aims to land “zero” exactly on the reminder’s time. If Alexa is slow to start, it starts from a lower number rather than finishing late.
The countdown replaces the reminder’s own sound with the finale’s sound at zero. Without a finale, the reminder plays as normal at its time.
Countdowns work on every plan that has reminders.

Create reminders from anywhere

Reminders really shine when other systems create them for you:

API: POST /reminders with a time (at) or a delay (in, like 45m). Give it your own externalId and creating it again replaces it instead of adding another, which is handy for things that move, like calendar events.
Home Assistant: when the washing machine starts, create a reminder in: 45m that says “The washing is done”. If the machine finishes early, delete it by its externalId.
AI assistants: ask “Remind the kids at 8:15 to put their shoes on, with a countdown” and the assistant uses the create_reminder tool.
Anything that can make an HTTP request: IFTTT, Node-RED, scripts, cron jobs.

Plan limits

	Free	Hobby	Ultimate
Reminders	3	50	Unlimited
One-off reminders	yes	yes	yes
Repeating reminders	–	yes	yes

Legacy Free and Legacy Pro accounts get the Free allowance; Legacy Premium gets the Hobby allowance.

If you move to a plan without repeating reminders, they stay in your account but don’t play until you upgrade again (or switch them to one-off).

Troubleshooting

Nothing played: check the reminder’s speaker is still set up, then look in Usage for a failed entry. A reminder is skipped if all of its speakers have been deleted.
It played at the wrong time: check the timezone in Settings.
The finale’s “zero” isn’t quite on time: Alexa’s start-up time varies a little between devices and networks. Let us know through Feedback if yours is consistently early or late.
“Repeating reminders are available on the Hobby and Ultimate plans”: your plan only includes one-off reminders.