A tiny vehicle drives across the top of your screen a few minutes before every Google Calendar event — a calm, glanceable nudge so you never miss a meeting.
Auto Reminder sits quietly in your system tray. A few minutes before a meeting, a little vehicle — an auto-rickshaw, plane, race car, motorbike, or bicycle — glides across the top of your screen with the event's name and time, then disappears.
No pop-up to dismiss. No sound. No window to manage. Just a friendly heads-up that you have something coming up.
- Reads your Google Calendar with no sign-in — you paste one private link, and that's it.
- Stays out of the way — the overlay is click-through and gone in a few seconds.
- Lives in the tray — pick your vehicle, start it at login, forget about it.
Works on Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). No installer and no .NET to set up — it's a single self-contained app.
- Open the latest release and download
AutoReminder-win-x64.zip. - Unzip it anywhere — your Desktop is fine.
- Double-click
AutoReminder.exe.
That's it. The app starts in your system tray (bottom-right corner).
First launch — "Windows protected your PC"? Because this is an independent app that isn't code-signed yet, Windows SmartScreen may show a blue warning. Click More info → Run anyway. The full source is right here in this repo, so you can always read or build it yourself.
Want it always running? Right-click the tray icon and enable Launch at Login.
Auto Reminder reads your calendar through Google's private Secret iCal link — there's no Google sign-in and no access to anything beyond that one URL. The app walks you through this on first launch:
- Click Open Google Calendar settings.
- In the left sidebar under Settings for my calendars, click your calendar, then Integrate calendar.
- Copy the Secret address in iCal format (it ends in
.ics). - Paste it into Auto Reminder, click Test connection, then Save.
You can change it any time from the tray menu → Calendar Source….
Use the Secret address, not the Public one — and keep it private. Anyone with that link can read your calendar.
- Five vehicles — auto-rickshaw, plane, race car, motorbike, bicycle. Switch any time from the tray.
- No sign-in — connects via Google's secret iCal link; no OAuth, no account access.
- Ambient overlay — click-through, no sound, auto-dismisses. It never steals focus or blocks your work.
- Launch at login — optional, one click.
- Single instance — won't pile up duplicate tray icons.
- Offline-friendly — caches your feed, so a brief network blip won't drop a reminder.
- Checks your calendar about once a minute.
- Shows the overlay 5 minutes before an event starts (configurable).
- Skips all-day events.
- Caches the latest feed locally so reminders keep working through short network hiccups.
Stored at %APPDATA%\AutoReminder\settings.json:
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
CalendarUrl |
Your secret iCal link | (unset) |
Vehicle |
auto, plane, racecar, motorbike, bicycle |
auto |
LaunchAtLogin |
Start automatically when you sign in | false |
LeadMinutes |
How many minutes before an event to remind you | 5 |
"Windows protected your PC" appears when I open it. That's SmartScreen flagging an unsigned indie app. Click More info → Run anyway.
My antivirus flagged the download. Self-contained single-file .NET apps sometimes trigger false positives. The complete source is in this repo — you're welcome to inspect it or build it yourself.
I connected my calendar but no reminder showed up. Reminders fire 5 minutes before an event. To check things quickly: tray → Test animation previews the overlay, and Calendar Source… → Test connection confirms your link is working.
I just added an event and it isn't detected. Google's secret iCal feed refreshes on its own schedule, so brand-new events can take a few minutes to appear.
I don't see it in the taskbar. It's a tray app — look in the bottom-right system tray, possibly under the ^ overflow arrow.
Requires the .NET 8 SDK.
dotnet run --project src/AutoReminder # run the app
dotnet run --project src/AutoReminder -- --test # preview the overlay once
dotnet test # run the test suite
# produce the single-file release exe
dotnet publish src/AutoReminder -c Release -p:PublishProfile=win-x64Architecture and contribution notes live in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Your calendar link and a cached copy of the feed stay on your machine. Auto Reminder talks only to Google's iCal endpoint over HTTPS — no analytics, no accounts, no servers in between.
Found a bug, have a question, or want to suggest a feature? Open an issue here, or reach out on X — @dhruzzz.
Inspired by auto-reminder by Shweta Ratanpura — the original macOS app that slides a vehicle across the screen before your next meeting. Auto Reminder is an independent Windows take on that idea.
Vehicle artwork: Microsoft Fluent Emoji (MIT), with Twemoji (CC-BY 4.0) as a fallback. See ATTRIBUTION.txt.
Not set yet. An MIT license is recommended (and is compatible with the bundled Fluent Emoji artwork) — add a LICENSE file before publishing.