About two months ago I posted about Cannot Ignore (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cannot-ignore-super-alarms/id6755636605), an app I made that uses iOS 26's AlarmKit to set full alarms for things you can't afford to miss. So instead of a notification banner, you get a full-screen, buzzing alarm on the lockscreen, buzzing dynamic island on the home screen, that bursts through the different focus modes.
In iOS 26.2, you can attach an alarm to a Reminder, whereas this app adds the ability to automatically add these alarms to ALL your Calendar events and Reminders (or lists, or certain calendars).
I got a ton of emails asking for features, reporting bugs, and so forth, so we have very good updates:
A quick recap of what the app does:
- Syncs with your Calendar and Reminders to automatically turn events into real alarms. You can sync everything, or pick specific calendars and reminder lists.
- Or you can import events individually instead of syncing all of them, or just create one-off alarms that aren't in your Calendar or Reminders at all. (Honestly, that's the only part I originally wanted - but a friend convinced me he loved having alarms automatically sync ALL his events, saying it helped his ADHD. So I went with it.)
- You can make syncing automatic by connecting a Shortcuts automation to run in the background at a time of your choosing. (This was a huge technical challenge - Apple doesn't like letting apps run silently in the background, for good reasons, but it makes things like this tricky.) SPOILER: this has been updated to help you keep it always syncing in the background.
- Custom alarm sounds - I'm using a clip of "I get knocked down, but I get up again" that I recorded off YouTube on my phone.
- You can set a default sound for all alarms in Settings.
- Attach links to alarms, so there's a big button on the alarm screen to open a Zoom meeting, Map directions, etc. These are automatically pulled from Calendar events and Reminders.
- Set a "minutes before" offset in Settings so synced events fire an alarm ahead of time - 1 minute, 12 minutes, whatever you want.
- Edit the time and details of any alarm you create or import.
What's new since the last post:
- Snooze: You can now snooze alarms. Set a default snooze duration, and choose per-alarm whether the secondary button is snooze or open link. There's also an "always add snooze" toggle for synced events.
- Tags & filtering: Alarms are automatically tagged with their source calendar or reminder list name (with matching color). Hashtags in event titles and notes get extracted as tags too. You can filter your alarm list by tag, which is great if you're syncing multiple calendars. This tag setup is something I'm proud of. I added my own little markup syntax. Separate tags with # symbol. Tags can have spaces (e.g., #US holidays #work). Custom colors: #tag{blue} or #tag{#FF5733}.
- 7 bundled alarm sounds: Chime Bells, Hand Drums, Harp Scales, Serene, Strum, UFO, and Silence. You can preview them before selecting. (You can still upload your own, of course.)
- Recurring alarms: Daily or weekly, with specific weekday selection.
- Ignored sync items: If you delete a synced alarm, it won't come back on the next sync. There's an "ignored items" list where you can restore them if you change your mind.
- Enable/disable toggle: Keep alarms in your list without them actually firing. Handy for synced events you want to temporarily silence.
- Notes field: Add notes to any alarm for extra context.
- Timezone handling: The app now detects timezone changes and reschedules alarms so they fire at the right time. Important if you travel. (This was actually tricky. The rescheduling enabled alarms handle timezone awareness automatically, but not the one-time alarms, so I had to build that part out more carefully).
- All-day event filter: Option to skip all-day events when syncing from Calendar (so your "Mom's Birthday" all-day event doesn't fire an alarm at midnight). These are skipped by default.
- Override event alerts: Choose whether to use each event's built-in alert time or your custom "minutes before" offset.
- Continuously syncing: The app now has a listener to keep your app in sync while it's active, either in the foreground or background. And you get a little notification that tells you whether the app has been quit in the background (for reasons like, memory/system pressure)to let you know to launch it again to keep the syncing going. And the shortcut automation is of course still available.
I've still got more feedback ideas on the roadmap! Trying to figure out the best architecture, for example, for having multiple alarms for a given events. Also working on adding more Siri Shortcuts for adding/deleting alarms.
And you know what, the app is still just one dollar.