Help

How CHKT works, how to connect a calendar, and what to do when something looks slow. The same page is inside the app under Settings, Help.

What CHKT is for

A reminder you can't ignore

When a reminder is due your phone makes a sound, then says the reminder out loud, and keeps doing it until you answer. It works with the screen locked and with no signal.

Nothing leaves the phone

Everything is kept on the phone itself. There is no account to make, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you connect a calendar yourself.

Answering an alert

Done clears it. Snooze puts it off for a few minutes. Swiping the alert away counts as missed, and the reminder comes back. If two fall due at once you answer them one at a time.

Delaying or skipping just this once

Press and hold a reminder in the list to push it back 30 minutes, an hour or two hours, or to skip it. A repeating reminder keeps its normal time for every time after that.

Using a calendar

Use your ordinary calendar. Tag the reminders you want in it.

It works both ways, but not evenly

Every event on the calendar you connect becomes a reminder that speaks and repeats every 5 minutes for an hour. Going the other way is filtered: only reminders you tag #cal are written out as events.

Why the tag matters

A daily "take my pills" is a reminder, not a diary entry. Without the filter, every small repeating thing you set would land in your calendar. The tag is what lets you point CHKT at your real calendar instead of keeping a second one nobody looks at.

Tagging one

Open a reminder and add cal in the tag box. It is always offered, even on a fresh install where nothing has used it yet. Remove the tag and its event comes off the calendar again on the next check.

If you would rather send everything

There is a switch beside the calendar you write to. Turn the filter off and every reminder is written out. That suits a calendar kept just for CHKT, which is still a perfectly good way to work if you prefer keeping the two apart.

All-day events are left alone

They have no time to alert at, and a calendar used for everyday tasks fills up with them. They stay on your calendar; CHKT simply doesn't turn them into reminders.

Undoing the wrong calendar

Point CHKT at the wrong calendar, your work one say, and it fills up with your reminders. Both calendar cards in Settings have a button that takes them all back off in one go. It deletes only the events CHKT itself created: everything already on that calendar stays, including every event CHKT read from it, and your reminders stay on the phone. It also stops CHKT writing there, so they don't come straight back. For the other half, the reminders a wrong calendar made on your phone, untick it under Read events from and they go with it.

The two ways to connect a calendar

Pick one, not both. If you're not sure, use the first.

Through the phone

If your calendar already shows in the phone's own calendar app, CHKT can read and write it there. Settings, Your calendar, allow it to see your calendars, then tick the CHKT one. Nothing goes over the internet: whatever app looks after the calendar does the syncing.

Straight to your calendar service

For a calendar that isn't on the phone. Settings, Calendar server, then give the web address of the CHKT calendar and an app password. Your provider's own settings have both, usually under a heading about calendars or apps. Use a password made just for calendars, not the one you sign in with.

When something seems slow or late

A new event hasn't arrived

CHKT checks the calendar every 15 minutes, and again the moment you open the app. Open CHKT and it should appear within a second or two. There is also a Check now button in Settings that forces a look and says what it found.

You can't hear the voice

Settings, Voice, Test the voice reads a line out at the volume a real alert would use. If you hear nothing, the volume to raise is the alarm one, not the media one. CHKT has no voice of its own; it speaks through whichever text-to-speech engine your phone has, and the same card links to Android's settings for changing the voice, its speed and its accent.

Alerts arriving late

Android quietly holds apps back to save battery. In the phone's own Settings, find CHKT and set its battery use to unrestricted.

The alert doesn't wake the screen

CHKT needs permission to show alarms and to appear over other apps. It asks the first time you run it; you can grant them later from Settings, Alarm reliability, which also has a Check every permission button that walks through the whole list again. Full-screen alarms are switched off again by every hand-installed update, and Android hides that setting where App info doesn't show it, so there is a button straight to it.

The rest of Settings

Notification sound is what plays before a reminder is spoken. Quiet hours let reminders arrive silently between two times. Snooze times are the six lengths offered when you snooze. Backup writes a daily copy to a folder of your choosing, and Export saves everything to one file you keep.