Pimlical Android Help

Alarm Preferences

There are several preference settings for handling alarms - this help section only covers those alarm preference settings that have to do with Pimlical's management of the alarm and snooze dialogs.

AlarmDefaultSound - The default alarm sound for appointments

AlarmFloatDefaultSound - The default alarm sound for Floating events/Tasks

AlarmSnoozeDefaultSound - The default alarm sound to play when a snoozed event triggers (or if multiple alarms, when all are snoozed)

AlarmSoundPlayTimesCount - Indicates how many consecutive times the alarm sound should be played. A value of zero indicates the alarm will be silent.

AlarmSoundRepeatCount - Indicates how many times the alarm sequence should be played if the alarm is never acknowledged (i.e. how many times the autosnooze feature should be used for an alarm that the user ignores. The default value is 100000 which effectively means it will repeat indefinitely. Alternatively, a value of say 3 would mean that after the third time the alarm sequence triggers, no further alarms will occur. However, the notification that an alarm has triggered is left in the Android notification area (so at a later time you can pull down the notification and view  the alarms).

AlarmSoundRepeatInterval - indicates the duration to elapse between redisplaying the alarm dialog and playing the alarm sound again (default is 10 minutes).

SecondsToAutoSnooze - indicates for how long the Alarm dialog will be displayed before it is automatically dismissed and all iltems automatically snoozed (they will be snoozed for the duration specified in the preference: AlarmSoundRepeatInterval) - (default is 2 minutes).

AlarmSnoozeButton1 - default snooze value for the first snooze button. This is specified as a Duration type value (1m = 1 minute, 2d = 2 days, 1h30m = 1 hour, 30 minutes etc.).

AlarmSnoozeButton2 - The default snooze value for the second snooze button

AlarmSnoozeButton3 - The default snooze value for the third snooze button

AlarmSnoozeButton4 - The default snooze value for the fourth snooze button

AlarmSnoozeButton5 - The default snooze value for the snooze button that appears in the Alarm Dialog

SnoozeStrings - specifies the list of durations to display in the popup list when snoozing an event. These are set as 'duration' type values, so something like 4d3h20m is quite legal. Each value should be separated with a vertical bar - for example, the default list is:  5m|10m|20m|30m|45m|1h|2h|4h

HideAlarmsMoreThanXDaysOut - Tells Pimlical to ignore any alarms set more than this number of days in the future (when handling the list of upcoming alarms)

UntimedAlarmTime - Specifies the time at which untimed alarms are to go off. Default value in newly loaded set of preferences is (9am) - you may have 0 set in previous preferences which would be midnight (so make sure you change this preference if you are an early-to-bed person!). Also, this feature only affects alarms set by Pimlical (local calendar, or PimlicalAlarmHandling is set to All).

SpeakAlarms - Set this to true to have Pimlical speak out all alarm descriptions before sounding the alarm sound (Only applicable when Pimlical is handling alarms directly and Android device supports Google Voice). This is very nice when you are driving or can't pull out the phone

VibrateOnAlarm - Set this to true to have Pimlical use vibration while the alarm is sounding

VibrationDuration - if zero, the device vibrates on and off until alarm is silenced or alarm dismissed/snoozed. If non-zero, the device vibrates continuously for this specified number of seconds

PitchForSpeakingAlarm - the default value for the pitch is 100% - you can adjust this over the range of 1 to 1,000 to change the pitch at which the alarm is spoken. This Android feature may not work on all Android devices.

SpeedForSpeakingAlarm - the default value for the speed is 100% - you can adjust this over the range of 1 to 1,000 to change the speed at which the alarm is spoken. This Android feature may not work on all Android devices.

AlarmPreamble - This is a string of text that will be spoken prior to speaking the alarms. You may want to customize this so when your phone suddenly starts speaking to you, you know why. The default is Calendar Alarm.

UnlockScreenOnAlarm - the default setting is true to unlock the screen to present the alarm dialog. If set to false, the lockscreen will pop up first. Note: some Android devices do not properly implement the Android OS feature that allows this to work.

PimlicalAlarmHandling - specifies how Pimlical will handle alarms. All: Pimlical will set alarms for items in both the local and the Android calendar database (you would need to shut off alarm handling in the native Android calendar app to avoid duplication), Local: Pimlical only sets alarms for items in the local Pimlical calendar database, None: Pimlical does not set any alarms (but alarms will still sound for items in the Android calendar if they are enabled there).

UseRingtoneVolumeForAlarms - Some Android phones have no setting for controlling the Alarm Volume (Bug? DDD? (Dumb Design Decision). Although the standard Android OS has such a control,  many Samsung phones for example have no control over it. In that case, set the preference: UseRingtoneVolumeForAlarms to true and then you can control the Alarm volume by adjusting the Ringtone Volume. 

IgnoreAlarmsOnHiddenItems - set this to TRUE to ignore the alarms on items that are specifically hidden because all categories assigned to the item are not selected for display.  If false, alarms will sound even if all categories to which the item is assigned are hidden.

NoAlarmsOnTheseCategories - specifies aList of categories for which there are no alarms (the default is all categories/calendars have alarms). If an item is assigned to any category in this list, an alarm will not sound on that item.

MaxDisplayedUpcomingAlarms - specifies the maximum # of upcoming alarms to display in list (if you pick a larger value, it will take longer to build the list). The default value is to display the next 50 upcoming alarms. 

ReleaseWakeLockOnAlarmComplete - Some Android devices will not autosnooze when the screen powers off, so P/A leaves the wake lock set to keep the device awake until it autosnoozes or the user manually dismisses/snoozes alarm. You can set this to True to reduce battery usage if your device is not one of those devices.

PlayNotificationSound - if true, Pimlical will play the default notification sound when snoozing items and posting a notification to the Android OS. Set to false to post silently.

UseNotificationWhenAlarmTriggers - Set to True to use the Android notification system when an alarm triggers (notification then displays the Alarm and Snooze Dialogs).

AlarmLEDColor - Sets the color of the LED status light on the Android device when a notification is posted. This may not work on All Android devices.

AutoSnoozeDuringPhoneCall - Normally, an alarm will trigger during a telephone call (default: False), but if set to True, then Pimlical will automatically snooze any alarms that trigger during a telephone call.

AlarmsIgnoreDoNotDisturb - Normally, if DND (Do Not Disturbe) is enabled in System Settings, Pimlical's alarms and vibration will be suppressed. However, if this preference is set to True, Pimlical will ignore the DND setting and sound its alarms anyway. Note that the OS feature of filtering the DND feature for Alarms will apply to Pimlical's alarms (with the exception that if you are using the Ringtone volume for the Alarm Volume, the DND filter for Alarms will not allow the alarm through).''

UseAlarmClockForAlarms - Normally, you will want to have this set to True (default). Set to False to use the older RTC Clock alarm (less reliable, but does not generate Alarm icon in status bar).

UseInsistentAlarmForNotification - On Android 10 and later, Pimlical uses notifications for alarms (due to new restrictions imposed by Google). This preference chooses the more insistent ALARM sound for notifications. Set to False to use the default NOTIFICATION sound (usually just a single 'ding' sound. Note that you can change the default Alarm and Notification sounds in the system settings of your Android device.

InsistentAlarmNotificationDuration - specifies the duration of the insistent alarm on Android 10 in seconds (usually the default Alarm sound is continuous (i.e. plays repeatedly) - this preference allows you to silence the alarm after the specified time. The default value is 20 seconds.

InsistentAlarmSnoozeDuration  - if you do not respond to the notification on Android 10, Pimlical/Android will auto-snooze the notification for a period of time specified by this preference which is a Duration value. The default value is 10 minutes.

MaximumAlarmNotifications - specifices the maximum number of times the notification on Android 10 should be repeated. The default value is 5. You can disable the auto-snooze feature for notifications by setting this value to zero.