# Slack reminders: what /remind can do, and where it stops > The commands Slack documents, the limits its own docs admit, and what to do about them. Source: https://heyray.io/blog/slack-reminders A Slack reminder can nudge you, it cannot chase anyone else **A Slack reminder is a message Slack sends back to you at a time you choose. You can set one on a channel with the /remind command, on a message through its more-actions menu, or on yourself from the Later tab. It repeats by the day at most, and it never checks whether the thing got done.** ## Key takeaways - A Slack reminder is a private nudge. It fires at a time you set, it reminds a person, and it has no idea whether the work behind it moved. - Slack documents `/remind me` and `/remind #channel`, and its own help page states three limits out loud: repeats work by the day but not in time increments, `/remind list` is visible only to you, and there is no documented slash-command form for reminding another person. - That last one is an absence in the documentation rather than a stated refusal, which is worth being precise about before you build a process on it. - The failure is not the nudge. It is that a reminder closes when you dismiss it, not when the thing is done, so the same nudge fires all week beside work nobody moved. - The useful test for any reminder you set: if it fires and nothing changes, was it ever the right instrument? Published 2026-08-26. About 6 minutes to read. Slack's help pages cover the syntax well enough. This is the part they do not put together: what /remind will not do, which of those limits Slack states out loud, and what it takes to make a nudge actually close something. ## What commands does Slack actually document? There are more ways to make a reminder in Slack than there are slash commands for it, which is the first thing worth untangling. The command covers channels. Everything else is a menu. - A channel reminder: /remind [#channel] [what] [when]. Slack's own example is /remind #marketing-team to submit expenses every Thursday. - Your own list: /remind list. It shows what you have set, with a delete option on each one. - A reminder about a specific message: open that message's more-actions menu and choose Remind me about this. - A reminder for yourself with no message attached: the Later tab, rather than a command. Worth saying plainly because people search for it: Slack's help page for reminders documents no slash-command form for reminding another person. That does not mean nothing happens if you try it. It means the behaviour is not something Slack writes down, so it is not something to build a habit on. Send this in any Slack channel to see the documented form: ``` /remind me at 4pm to send the Novex invoice ``` ## What is a Slack reminder genuinely good at? A short list, and none of it is faint praise. For a nudge you are setting for yourself, /remind is faster than any tool you could install, it needs no setup, and it is already in the window you are typing in. - Catching a message you cannot deal with right now, straight from the message itself. - A standing team prompt on a channel, like the expenses example in Slack's own docs. - Anything where the person being reminded and the person who needs to act are the same person. ## What are the limits Slack states out loud? These are not complaints from us. Each one is on Slack's own reminder page, which makes them the most reliable thing in this article. - Repeats are daily at the finest. Slack writes that you can set reminders to repeat by the day, for example every Monday, but not in time increments, for example every hour. - Your reminder list is yours alone. Slack describes /remind list as showing reminders visible only to you, so there is no shared view of what the team has pending. - There is no documented command for reminding somebody else, as above. Read together those three describe a personal tool rather than a team one, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for it to be. The trouble starts when a team uses it as though it were the other thing. ## Why do reminders you set for other people go quiet? Say you do get a reminder onto somebody else, through a channel prompt or otherwise. It fires. Then nothing else happens, and the reason is structural rather than a bug. A reminder is a message with a timer on it. It has no idea what it is about. It cannot tell whether the invoice went out, whether the ticket was opened, or whether the person read it and moved on. So it either fires once into a busy channel and scrolls away, or it repeats on schedule and keeps firing after the work is finished, which teaches everybody to ignore it. That second failure is worse than the first. A nudge that has been wrong three times is a nudge nobody reads the fourth time. ## How do you make a nudge actually close something? Two habits, and neither one needs a new tool. - Point the reminder at a person, not at a task. Somebody should chase the invoice is a reminder that ages badly. Priya, has the invoice gone out yet is one that can be answered, and an answered nudge is one you can stop sending. - Set the reminder where the work is tracked, not where it was agreed. A ticket with a due date already knows whether it is done. A reminder in a channel never will. If your team keeps its work in one place, the second habit is easy. If the work lives in Linear and the conversation lives in Slack, you are back to keeping two systems in your head, which is the thing that made you set a reminder in the first place. ## What does Ray do differently? Ray takes reminders in plain language in the thread, including recurring ones, and it can chase a person rather than a clock. Because it reads the channel, a chase can carry what it is about instead of just the time it is due. The part that matters more than the reminder: Ray can look at the tracker before it nudges, so the question is has this moved rather than it is Thursday again. Anything that writes to another tool still asks for approval first. ## What Ray does not do here - Ray does not see the reminders you set with /remind, and Slack does not see the ones you set with Ray. The two lists are separate, so a reminder in one is invisible to the other. - Ray cannot edit a reminder in place today. Changing the time means cancelling the old one and setting a new one, which is two asks rather than one. - Ray reads only the channels it has been added to. A reminder about work discussed in a private channel it is not part of is a reminder it cannot make or chase. - Deciding whether something is worth chasing is the model's judgement, and in a busy channel it is deliberately biased towards staying quiet rather than nudging on a maybe. ## What people ask next **How do I set a recurring reminder in Slack?** Add a repeat to the end of the command, as in Slack's own example: /remind #marketing-team to submit expenses every Thursday. Slack documents repeats by the day, so every Monday works and every hour does not. **Can I set a Slack reminder for someone else?** Slack's reminder help page documents no slash-command format for it. A channel reminder is the documented way to prompt a group, and everyone in that channel sees it. **Where do I see all my Slack reminders?** Type /remind list. Slack describes what it returns as visible only to you, so it shows your reminders rather than the team's, and each one carries a delete option. **Why do my Slack reminders get ignored?** Usually because they keep firing after the work is done. A reminder runs on a clock and has no way to check the thing it is about, so a repeating one is wrong as often as it is right, and a nudge that has been wrong three times stops being read. ## Sources - Slack Help Center, Set a reminder: https://slack.com/help/articles/208423427-Set-a-reminder. Every command format and all three limits above are quoted from this page, including the daily-repeat ceiling and the visible-only-to-you description of /remind list.