Use Critical Alerts

In addition to its standard notification options, Due also offers the ability to use critical alerts, which bypass the ‘Do Not Disturb’ and silent setting on your device, allowing you to receive important notifications.

You can use Critical Alerts for both reminders and timers. A reminder or timer can use a Standard Alert, a Critical Alert, or a Prominent Alert. Choosing a Critical Alert for an item turns off its Prominent Alert, and vice versa.

For a side-by-side comparison of the three alert types and guidance on when to use each, see Standard, Critical & Prominent Alerts: What’s the Difference?

Turn on Critical Alerts Setting on Your Device

To receive critical alerts on a device, you must first enable critical alerts for Due on that device. Otherwise, you will only receive standard notifications. Please note that if you have an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone, it will mirror your iPhone's notification settings by default. Therefore, you only need to enable critical alerts for Due on your iPhone to receive them on your Apple Watch.

1. Open Due on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Go to ☰ [Menu] > Settings > Alerts & Badges.
3. Tap ‘Critical Alerts’ under ‘Reminders’ or ‘Timers’ section.

There are three options available:

1. None: You will not receive any critical alerts on this device.
2. All Reminders / All Timers: You will receive critical notifications for every reminder/timer notification on this device.
3. Specific Reminders / Specific Timers: You will only receive critical notifications for reminders and timers that have critical alerts enabled. Please see the section ‘Selectively Receive Critical Alerts For Specific Reminders or Timers’ for more information.

The first time you choose ‘All Reminders / Timers’ or ‘Specific Reminders / Timers’, Due will prompt you for permission to send critical alerts. You will need to grant Due access before Due can send you critical alerts on that device.

Selectively Receive Critical Alerts For Specific Reminders or Timers

You may opt to receive Critical Alerts for selected reminders and timers only. To do this, you can either turn on the Critical Alerts setting for your device first and set it to ‘Specific Reminders’ or ‘Specific Timers’ (refer to Turn on Critical Alerts Setting on Your Device), or simply enable Critical Alert on any individual item.

There are two ways to enable Critical Alert for a single reminder or timer.

You can selectively enable Critical Alert for a reminder or timer from the list itself (left), or from the alert setting in the editor (right).

From the list

1. In ‘All Reminders’ or ‘All Timers’, touch and hold a reminder or timer to see a list of options.
2. Tap on ‘Critical Alert’.

From the editor

1. When creating or editing a reminder or timer, tap the bell icon near the top of the screen.
2. Tap the ‘Alert Type’ button near the bottom of the alert picker.
3. Tap ‘Critical Alert’.
4. Tap ‘Done’ near the top of the alert picker.
5. Tap ‘OK’ to save the item.

To set a custom alert volume for this item, open the ‘Alert Type’ menu again once Critical Alert is on. A ‘Volume’ option appears, where you can follow your device’s default, choose a fixed level, or set it to Silent.

Because alert types are mutually exclusive, enabling Critical Alert on an item that previously used a Prominent Alert will turn off its Prominent Alert, and vice versa.

Here, only ‘Feed Pepper’ has Critical Alert enabled, so it’s the only reminder showing the indicator.

A three-exclamation-mark indicator appears next to a reminder or timer only when you’ve specifically turned on Critical Alert for it.

When Alerts & Badges > Critical Alerts is set to All Reminders / Timers, every reminder or timer fires as a critical alert automatically. Due does not display any indicator in this case.

‘Continue Playing Sound on Apple Watch’

If you have an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone, you‘ll find a switch named ‘Continue Playing Sound on Apple Watch’ in the Critical Alerts settings.

This setting is turned off by default. This setting only applies when:

1. the reminder or timer has selective critical alert enabled, and
2. the alert sound for the item is set to ‘None’.

By default, a reminder or timer with alert sound set to ‘None’ does not play any alert sound on any device. However, by enabling the 'Continue Playing Sound on Apple Watch' option, you can choose to receive the default critical alert sound on your Apple Watch, even if the alert sound is set to 'None.'

This feature is useful for users who only want to receive audible alerts on their Apple Watch while keeping their iPhone silent during critical alerts.

If you do not require this functionality, you should leave the option turned off.

Managing Critical Alert setting on your Mac

Due for macOS does not deliver Critical Alerts. Items with Critical Alert will be delivered as regular notifications on macOS. However, you can create and manage items with Critical Alert on your Mac, and these items will fire as a Critical Alert on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Before you can set Critical Alert on your Mac, you must first enable Critical Alert on at least one reminder or timer from your iPhone or iPad, and let it sync to the Mac. Once that has happened, you can freely set the alert type on any reminder or timer from the Mac.

There are two ways to set the alert type for a reminder or timer on Mac.

From the list

1. Right-click (or Control-click) a reminder or timer in the list.
2. Choose ‘Alert Type’, then ‘Critical Alert’ from the submenu. You can set the volume from the same submenu.

Setting Critical Alert from your Mac by right-clicking on the item and choosing ‘Critical Alert’ from ‘Alert Type’.

From the editor

1. Open a reminder or timer for editing.
2. Click the ‘Alert type’ field.
3. Choose ‘Critical Alert’ from the menu.
4. Click ‘Save’.

Setting Critical Alert from your Mac using the ‘Alert type’ field in the editor.

Limitations and Requirements

1. Critical alerts are currently only supported on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
2. Critical alerts require Due for iOS 23.1.
3. To use selective critical alerts, you need to have Due for iOS 23.3 or a newer version installed. If you enable this feature, you’ll also need Due for macOS 23.1 or a later version to synchronize with it.
4. Depending on your date of purchase, selective critical alerts may require the Upgrade Pass.