How to use Slack reminders, and what to do when a reminder isn't enough

Slack has three ways to remind you of something, and most frustration with them comes from using the wrong one. A reminder on a message brings you back to a conversation. A /remind command sends you or a channel a line of text at a set time. A scheduled workflow posts a properly formatted message on a schedule.

This guide covers all three as they work today, including the October 2026 change that replaced Later with a new To-dos tab.

The short answer

To set a reminder on a message, hover over it, open the three dots menu and choose Remind me about this. To write your own, type /remind me to [what] [when] in any message field, as in /remind me to file expenses on the 1st of every month, one of the examples in Slack's reminders guide. To remind a whole channel, swap me for the channel name, in the format /remind [#channel] [what] [when].

Your own reminders now live in the To-dos tab in the sidebar, where each one is a to-do with a due date. Channel reminders live in the channel, and you manage them by typing /remind list there.

If you only remember one thing, make it this. When the thing you need to come back to is a message, put the reminder on the message. When it is a habit, write a /remind. When it is a team ritual that someone else may have to maintain, build a workflow.

Put a reminder on a message

Most reminders people set are really about a conversation. A customer asks for a quote, a colleague promises an answer by Thursday, a thread needs a decision once the numbers are in. Typing that context into a /remind command means rewriting what is already sitting in front of you, and losing the link back to it.

A reminder attached to the message avoids both problems. When it fires, you land on the original message with the whole thread around it, so you can reply on the spot.

On desktop

1. Hover over the message or file you want to come back to.
2. Click the three dots icon in the top-right corner, then choose Remind me about this.
3. Pick one of the suggested times, or choose Custom and set your own.

On mobile

1. Tap and hold the message or file.
2. Tap Remind me.
3. Choose a time from the list, or pick Custom.

When the time comes, you get a notification and a badge on the To-dos and Activity tabs. Pick a time when you can actually act on it. A reminder for a reply that needs half an hour of thought is no use five minutes before your next call.

Write your own reminder with /remind

The /remind command is the one most people mean when they talk about reminders in Slack. You type it into any message field, and instead of posting a message, Slack schedules a reminder and confirms what it understood.

The three parts: who, what and when

Every /remind command has the same shape: who the reminder is for, what it should say, and when it should arrive. Slack documents the format as /remind [#channel] [what] [when], and me takes the place of the channel for a reminder to yourself. Two examples from Slack's own reminders guide show the range:

/remind me to file expenses on the 1st of every month/remind me to check my Asana tasks at 9:15am every weekday

Notice that the "what" is written as an action, not a topic. "Check my Asana tasks" tells you what to do when it fires. "Asana" would only tell you that something, somewhere, mattered.

Times and dates Slack understands

Slack reads plain English for the "when" part: a time, a day, a date, or a phrase like "in two hours" or "tomorrow." Slack recommends the American English date and time format for the best results, so December 4 or 12/4 is safer than 4 December or 4/12. Writing at 4pm is clearer than leaving the time out.

That matters because of a default that catches people out. A reminder set for a day with no time, such as "tomorrow" or "every Tuesday," arrives at 9 a.m. in your time zone. You can change that default from your profile picture, under Preferences, in the setting for the default time of reminder notifications.

A channel reminder fires at one moment for everyone, which is worth remembering on a distributed team. Set it for nine in the morning in London and your New York colleagues get it at four in the morning. Pick the time with the readers in mind, not the sender.

After you send the command, read the confirmation. It repeats the reminder back to you with the time Slack settled on, and that is where you catch a misread date before it matters.

What /remind will not do

There are three limits worth knowing before you build a routine around reminders.

The first is frequency. Reminders can repeat by the day, such as every Monday, but not in time increments such as every hour. If you need something every hour, a reminder is the wrong tool.

The second is who it reaches. The format Slack documents takes yourself or a channel, not another person. To nudge a colleague, post a channel reminder that mentions them, or write them a direct message and schedule it to send at the right moment. Both have the advantage of being visible, so nobody is surprised by a reminder they did not know existed.

The third is guests. Guests cannot create channel reminders, so a contractor or customer in a shared channel will need a full member to set one up for them.

Remind a whole channel

A channel reminder posts a message to the channel at the time you choose, using the description you gave it. Slack positions these as best for simple team reminders, and suggests a workflow for anything more complex. That is good advice, and we come back to it below.

The format is the same as a personal reminder, with the channel in place of me:

/remind #marketing-team to submit expenses every Thursday

Mention a user group to make it land

A reminder posted to a busy channel is easy to scroll past. The fix is to mention the people who need to act, and the cleanest way is a user group. User groups are special usernames that notify every member at once, and they are available on all paid Slack plans.

Slack's own editorial team runs its daily standup with a single reminder that does exactly this:

/remind #team-editorial Hey @editorial-team What’s on today? every weekday at 9:45am

It works because it does three things at once. It goes to the place where the answers belong, it notifies only the people who should answer, and it asks a question rather than stating a topic.

Keep the channel tidy

On a small team, answers to a recurring prompt can go straight into the channel. On a larger one, Slack suggests answering in a thread, so the channel stays clear for other work while everyone can still see the updates. If you set the reminder, reply to it in a thread first. People copy what they see.

Make a reminder repeat

To make any reminder repeat, add a repeat phrase like "every day," "every Monday," "every weekday" or "every two weeks" to the end of it. Monthly reminders use dates, as in "on the 1st of every month." Combine the repeat with a time, so the reminder does not fall back to the default.

/remind me to clear my to-dos every weekday at 5pm/remind #design to post the week's work every Friday at 3pm/remind #finance to send the payroll report every two weeks at 2pm/remind me to review my calendar for next week every Sunday at 6pm/remind #ops to check the backup report on the 1st of every month at 10am

For anything unusual, such as a fortnightly reminder that has to start on a particular week, set it, then read the confirmation for the next date. If it is wrong, delete it and try again with clearer wording. Our guide to recurring reminders in Slack goes further, with schedules that are easy to get wrong and how to word them.

Where your reminders went: Later is now To-dos

If you followed an older guide and could not find the Later tab, this is why. Starting in October 2026, Slack gives everyone a personal to-do list, and the To-dos tab is replacing Later in the sidebar, as Slack explains in Later is now To-dos. The change is rolling out gradually, so not every workspace has it yet.

Nothing was deleted in the move. Later items that had a reminder became to-dos, and items without a reminder moved to the Saved section of Home. So if you saved a message without a reminder last month, look in Saved. If you set a reminder on it, look in To-dos.

Reminders and to-dos are now the same thing with one difference: a reminder is a to-do with a due date. When the date arrives you get a notification and a badge on the To-dos and Activity tabs. Adding a message to your to-dos does not set a reminder on its own, so add one if you want to be nudged.

If you still see Later

If your workspace has not received the update, your reminders are still in Later, in its in-progress list. Everything in this guide about setting reminders works the same way. Only the place you go to review them is different, and it will change when the update reaches you.

See, edit, complete and delete reminders

Managing reminders is where most people get stuck, partly because personal and channel reminders are handled in different places. Here is where each one lives.

Your own reminders

Open To-dos in the sidebar to see your reminders. Hover over one and click Edit reminder to choose a new time, or Clear due date to remove the reminder while keeping the to-do. Click Mark complete when you are done, which is also possible straight from the notification in Activity.

The filter button is more useful than it looks. It can show only overdue to-dos, only upcoming reminders, or only items with no reminder at all. A quick look at the overdue filter at the end of the day is the simplest way to stop a reminder list from turning into a graveyard.

Channel reminders

Channel reminders cannot be edited. To change one, delete it and create it again with the new wording or schedule. To delete it, go to the channel where the reminder posts and type /remind list, then send it. Slack replies with a message only you can see, listing the channel's reminders you are able to delete, each with a Delete button.

Stopping a reminder someone else set

If a recurring reminder is still posting to a channel and you cannot find it in /remind list, the likely reason is that you do not have permission to delete it. Ask the person who created it, or a workspace admin, to remove it. Ask in the channel itself, which also tells everyone else that the reminder is on its way out.

The same applies when someone leaves the team. A standup reminder created by a manager who has moved on will keep posting until somebody removes it, so it is worth checking /remind list in your busiest channels every few months.

Reminder wording teams actually use

A reminder only works if the person reading it knows exactly what to do. The commands below are written for routines most teams run, and each one names the action, the people and a time. Replace the channel and user group names with your own.

/remind #team-support @support-team Post your handover notes in a thread before you sign off every Friday at 4pm/remind #team-eng @eng-oncall Hand over on-call: open incidents, anything flaky, anything you muted every Monday at 10am/remind #all-hands Submit this week's timesheet before you log off every Friday at 3pm/remind #team-cs @account-managers Review renewals due next quarter and flag any at risk every Monday at 9:30am/remind #finance Chase overdue invoices and note who you contacted in a thread every Tuesday at 11am/remind #team-growth Post last week's signups, activation and churn in a thread every Monday at 9am/remind #it-ops Review who has admin access and remove anyone who has left on the 1st of every month at 10am/remind #team-product @product What did you ship, what's next, where are you blocked? every weekday at 9:45am/remind me to check the overdue filter in To-dos every weekday at 4:30pm

Each one follows the same pattern as Slack's standup example: a channel where the answers belong, a group that should act, and a question or instruction rather than a label. The support handover asks for a thread on purpose, because a dozen handover notes posted straight into the channel bury everything else on a Friday afternoon. The renewal and invoice reminders say what done looks like, so nobody has to guess what the person who set them had in mind.

For more ideas, including reminders for one-off projects and personal routines, see our collection of Slack reminder examples.

Reminders people don't learn to ignore

The quickest way to ruin channel reminders is to set too many of them. When a channel gets a prompt every morning, another at lunch and a third before the end of the day, people start skimming past them. After a few weeks, the reminder that matters looks exactly like the ones that do not.

A few habits keep reminders useful. Give each recurring reminder one owner, and put that person's name in the reminder text, so everyone knows who to ask when it stops making sense. Prefer a weekly reminder to a daily one unless the task really happens every day. When a reminder has fired three times in a row and nobody acted on it, treat that as a sign the reminder is wrong, not that the team is lazy.

Reminders aimed at a colleague need more care than reminders aimed at yourself. A channel reminder that mentions one person by name every morning reads as a public nudge, however friendly the wording. If it is about one person's task, a direct message is kinder, and a conversation about the deadline is kinder still.

Wording does a lot of the work. "Timesheets!" invites an eye roll. "Submit this week's timesheet before you log off" tells people what to do and when they are done. Ask a question when you want an answer, and give an instruction when you want an action, but avoid stacking both into one reminder.

When a scheduled workflow beats a reminder

A channel reminder is a line of plain text. For anything more, Slack itself recommends a workflow built from the scheduled message template. In Workflow Builder, the Send a scheduled message template lets you write a formatted message, pick the channel, choose a start date and set how often it repeats. Setting one up takes a few minutes on desktop:

1. Click Agents & tools in the sidebar, then open Workflows and choose Templates.
2. Select the Send a scheduled message template.
3. Click the first pencil icon to set the start date, the time and how often it repeats.
4. Click the second pencil icon to choose the channel and write the message.
5. Click Finish Up, name the workflow, add any workflow managers, and publish it.

Unlike a channel reminder, the workflow can be edited later, and you can add other people as workflow managers so it does not belong to one person.

Here is a simple rule for choosing. If the message is one line and you are happy to own it, use /remind. If it needs formatting, links, more than one question, or a teammate who can change it while you are on holiday, build a workflow. Workflows can also do things a reminder cannot, such as collecting answers in a form, which matters for anything you want to track rather than just prompt.

Slack's help also mentions that you can ask Slackbot to create reminders for you. That is handy for setting one up in plain language. It does not change the limits above, because the result is still a reminder.

What a reminder can't tell you

Every option so far shares one property. A reminder fires at a time you chose, whether or not anything happened in the meantime. That is perfect for "submit your timesheet" and useless for "did anyone answer the question I asked on Tuesday?"

This is the gap most teams hit sooner or later. You ask a colleague something with an @mention, they get busy, and the question sinks. You can set a reminder to check, but it fires even if they answered an hour later, and you still have to go and look. The same thing happens with customers in a Slack Connect channel. A reminder to "check the customer channels" every hour is not possible, and even if it were, it would not tell you which message has been waiting.

What these situations need is a check for a reply, not a clock. That is what we built Follow Up Bot to do. When you @mention someone with a question and they have not replied within your timer, it asks you privately whether to send a nudge. For Slack Connect channels, it alerts your team when a customer message passes your response target with no reply. If you need tickets, queues and dashboards, a helpdesk is the better fit, and our comparison of bots that send reminders and follow-ups in Slack covers the options honestly.

For everything else, the built-in tools are enough. Put reminders on messages, keep /remind for habits, give team rituals a workflow, and clear out the reminders you no longer need.

Questions people ask