How to set up check-in reminders
The interval you pick decides whether this works. Too short and you will resent it. Too long and it stops being a useful safety net.
Pick an interval you can actually keep
Start with how long you would normally go without touching the internet. Someone at home might check in daily without thinking. Someone on a two-week trek with patchy signal cannot.
The rule that matters: the interval should be roughly the longest you would normally be silent, plus a comfortable margin. If you usually go three days without a device, a seven-day interval gives you room. A three-day interval does not, and you will trip it by accident.
It is worth being generous here. A false alarm is more annoying than a late one, and the grace period is what makes the whole thing safe.
What the reminders look like
You should not be surprised by your own deadline. LastKnow nags at set points before the window closes, and the tone gets firmer as it approaches.
Each reminder is a chance to check in with one click, usually straight from the email. You do not have to log in and find a button.
If you ignore all of them, the window closes and a grace period starts. That is deliberate dead space. It exists so that a hospital stay, a dead phone, or a bad week does not send anything.
Email and push are separate
Reminders can reach you two ways: email to your account address, and push on a device where you turned notifications on. Each has its own switch, and they are independent. Turning one off does not touch the other.
Both also split by what they carry. A check-in reminder is the nag before your window closes. A status update is a note from someone you watch. You can want one and not the other, so each channel has a switch for each.
In Settings, Email notifications covers mail to your account address. Notifications on this device covers the phone or browser you are using right now. Push is per device, so the switch on your laptop does not affect your phone.
On an iPhone or iPad, push stays greyed out in Safari even when LastKnow is already on the Home Screen. Open that icon and use the switch there. If the icon opens Safari, it was added as a bookmark: add it again and leave Open as Web App on. The web app guide covers the steps. On a desktop browser push can work too, but it is most useful on the phone you carry.
Turning reminders off, and back on
Every email we send has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and mail programs show their own unsubscribe button from a header we set. Either one stops check-in reminders, status notes, and invitations by email.
It stops notification email: check-in reminders, status notes, and invitations. It does not stop password resets, and it does not stop a letter being sent when you go quiet. Those get through regardless, which is the point of them.
Changed your mind? Go to Settings and turn email notifications back on. That clears the unsubscribe for your address, so reminders and status mail start arriving again.
If you only want to stop one kind, use the switches rather than the unsubscribe link. The link stops reminders, status updates, and invitations together.
The grace period is not padding
People ask why there is a grace period at all. Two reasons.
- Reminders fail. Email lands in spam, a phone is off, a notification is missed. The grace period absorbs that without consequence.
- Real life interrupts. Illness, travel, a broken device. None of these mean anything, and none of them should trigger a letter.
If the grace period feels too long for your situation, that is worth thinking about, because the reason it exists does not go away.
More than one way to check in
This is the part that gets overlooked. If your only route is one app on one phone, losing that phone is an incident.
LastKnow accepts a check-in from the site, from the ping page on your device, from a one-click link in email, and with a PIN. Any of them resets the timer.
That matters if you are somewhere with no data but someone has your email, or if you are at a desk and would rather use the site than the phone.
Setting it up
- Decide your interval, erring on the long side.
- Set it in settings.
- Confirm the reminders are arriving. The first one is the test.
- Add a second check-in route if the first is fragile, such as a phone that might die.
- Write your letters and arm them. Until you arm something, a missed check-in does not send anything.
Step five is the one people skip. A check-in schedule with nothing armed is just a reminder to visit a website.
If you want a test
Send a test to yourself before you rely on this. It is the only way to confirm that mail reaches you, that the links work, and that the wording reads the way you expect. Ten minutes now saves uncertainty later.
Last updated: 2026-10-19