A Telegram reminder bot whose reminders arrive in the chat, not in another app
A reminder is only useful where you will see it. Put it in a separate app and it fires while your phone is in a pocket; put it in the group chat that the reminder is about, and the people it concerns get it at the same moment you do.
NudgeRemindBot does the second thing. A reminder created in a group is delivered to that group; one created in a private chat with the bot is delivered privately. A background check runs every minute, so delivery lands on the minute rather than whenever an app next happens to sync.
Time phrases and why /tz matters
The bot parses several shapes of time rather than making you fill in a form. Relative offsets work (in 2h, in 1h30m), as do bare clock times (at 19:00, rolled to tomorrow if that hour has already passed today), tomorrow plus a time, a weekday name with a time, and a full date.
All of those are read against the UTC offset you save once with /tz. Skip that step and the bot reads everything as UTC, which is the single most common reason a reminder appears to fire at the wrong hour. /tz +2 takes a second and fixes every future reminder at once.
When a reminder fires it arrives with a Snooze button carrying a few preset delays. Tapping one reschedules the same reminder rather than making you retype it, which is the difference between a reminder you act on and a reminder you dismiss.
Repeating reminders use the same grammar: every day 19:00, or daily 19:00. That is the one part of the parser gated behind Pro.
?start=zovo so arrivals from this page are counted separately.From zero to a working reminder
- Start the bot. Open it in a private chat and send /start. This also creates the DM channel the bot needs if you ever want private reminders.
- Save your offset. /tz +2. Do this before anything else; it is what makes every later time phrase mean what you think it means.
- Create one. /remind tomorrow 9am call the dentist. The bot confirms with the exact time it resolved to, so a misparse is visible immediately rather than at 9am.
- Review and prune. /list shows what is pending with an id. /del 4 removes one by that id.
- Add it to a group. Reminders created in a group are delivered to that group, which is how a team reminder reaches everyone rather than one person.
Command reference
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /remind tomorrow 9am call the dentist | Create a reminder. Relative, clock, weekday or full-date forms all parse. |
| /list | Show your pending reminders with their ids. |
| /del 4 | Delete a reminder by id. |
| /tz +2 | Save your UTC offset. Everything is read as UTC until you do. |
| /pro | Pro menu: one-time Stars payment or a monthly subscription. |
Free and Pro
Free
- 5 active reminders at a time
- All one-off time formats
- Snooze on every delivered reminder
Pro
- Unlimited active reminders
- Daily repeating reminders (every day 19:00)
Pro on this bot is per person and is the one bot in the set sold two ways: a one-time 150 Stars payment, or 100 Stars a month. Both unlock the same thing.
What it stores
- One row per reminder: your user id, the chat id it will be delivered to, the text you wrote, the fire time, and the repeat interval if there is one.
- A user row holding your id, username, saved UTC offset and Pro status.
- Reminder text is only ever sent back to the chat it was created in. It is never posted anywhere else and never read by any other user.
Questions
- Where does the reminder arrive?
- In whichever chat you created it in. A group reminder posts to the group; a reminder set in the private chat with the bot arrives privately.
- What if I forget /tz?
- Everything is read as UTC. If your reminders land at a consistent, wrong hour, this is why. Set /tz and new reminders will be correct.
- How precise is delivery?
- A check runs every minute, so a reminder lands within about a minute of its target time. It is not a second-accurate alarm.
- Can I snooze?
- Yes. Every delivered reminder carries a Snooze button with preset delays, and tapping one reschedules that same reminder.
- What counts against the free limit?
- Reminders that have not fired yet. Delivered ones free their slot, so five pending is a working limit for most people rather than five ever.
Other Telegram bots in this set
All of them are listed alongside the rest of Zovo's free online tools, and the browser-side half of the catalogue is under Chrome extensions.
Want the step-by-step walkthrough? Read Reminder bot setup: the full guide on tg.zovo.one.