Launching apps from alarms

An alert can carry an app. When it fires, the screen shows that app's real icon with TAP TO OPEN curved underneath, and tapping it stops the alarm and opens the app.

Android only for now. iOS provides no way to list the apps on a device or to open one by name, so the app option isn't available there yet.

The case it was built for: a repeating reminder to order your repeat prescriptions. At 8am the alarm goes off showing the NHS App icon. You tap it, the ringing stops, the app opens. No URL to remember, no hunting through the launcher while half awake.

It works the same way for anything an alarm is for rather than about: a workout app, a meditation timer, the banking app you set the alarm to make you use.

Attaching an app

The app is attached to an individual alert, not to the event, so it's set in the same place you set the alert's time and choose between Alarm and Notification. See reminders and alerts for how alerts work generally.

Add or edit an alert on an event.
Tap the App field. Unset, it reads Choose app.
Pick an app from the sheet that slides up.
The field now shows that app's own icon and name.

One app per alert. To change it, tap the field again; to remove it, tap the × on the right of the field.

The Choose App sheet

A sheet over your calendar, not a separate screen. The calendar stays visible behind it.

Every app you can open from your home screen, listed alphabetically with its real icon.
Search apps filters as you type, and matches anywhere in the name: typing amaz finds Amazon Shopping.
An alphabet rail down the right edge jumps you to a letter.
Cancel in the header closes it, as does dragging the sheet down or tapping outside it.
Tapping an app selects it and closes the sheet. Re-open it later and the app you already chose is ticked.

On a phone with a lot of apps installed the list takes a moment to appear the first time; it's reading every icon off disk.

Calendite only asks Android for apps that have a home-screen entry. It does not request the broader permission to see everything installed on your device, and nothing about which app you pick ever leaves the phone.

When the alarm rings

The bell that normally sits at the top of the ringing screen is replaced by the app's own launcher icon in a circle, with the app's name curved above it and TAP TO OPEN curved below.

Everything else behaves as it always does: the alert text, snooze, and slide-to-dismiss are unchanged, and an alarm with no app attached still shows the bell.

Tapping the icon does three things in order: stops the ringtone, opens the app, and closes the alarm screen. Stopping first matters; an alarm still ringing over the app you just opened is the obvious way to get this wrong. Closing the alarm screen means pressing Back from the app takes you home rather than to a dead alarm.

The icon is fetched fresh every time rather than stored, so it follows the app through redesigns and updates instead of going stale.

If the app is uninstalled

Calendite saves the app's name alongside it, so it can always tell you which app has gone missing rather than showing a blank.

While you're editing. The alert's App field and the event's alarm card both read NHS App uninstalled in muted text, deliberately not styled as though it's set. The field stays tappable so you can swap in a replacement. You find out on the edit screen rather than at 8am.

On the ringing screen. The badge dims and reads App Uninstalled, with no Tap to Open and no tap target. There's nothing to open, and offering a tap that does nothing is worse than saying so. The layout doesn't shift, so the alarm looks the same shape either way.

What it doesn't do

It opens the app, not a page inside it. You land on wherever the app normally starts, not on its prescriptions tab or a specific screen.
One app per alert. One badge, one app.
No store link. When an app is missing the alarm screen says so; it won't offer to reinstall it for you.
Home-screen apps only. Shortcuts and widgets can't be attached.