# Allow all users to set topic reminders
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [November 7, 2018, 9:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508 "2018-11-07T09:35:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dbolkensteyn](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dbolkensteyn)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2018, 9:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/1 "2018-11-07T09:35:18Z")
My organisation has two Discourse instances: a public facing one to provide community support on which all employees have moderator rights, and an internal instance on which only Discourse administrators have moderator rights as of today.
On the public instance, we are able to set reminders on topics and following-up on them is easy. On the internal instance, we do not have access to the _Set Topic Timer… → User Topic Timers → Remind Me_ action and as a workaround typically email ourselves a link to topic and rely on on email snoozing instead.
To me, allowing any user to setup topic reminders natively from the UI seems like a no-brainer. Are there fundamental reasons that would prevent this enhancement from making it into the product? I’m open to any suggestion to make our workflow more efficient.
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### Author:  [@dbolkensteyn](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dbolkensteyn)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 9:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/2 "2018-11-23T09:20:10Z")
Any update on this?
1. Does this request make sense from a functional point of view?
2. Can this request make it into the issue tracker?
3. Would you welcome a Pull Request implementing this change proposal? If so, do you foresee any challenges?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/3 "2018-11-23T21:33:57Z")
> [@dbolkensteyn](#):
>
> Can this request make it into the issue tracker?
This is the “_issue_” tracker 😉
> [@dbolkensteyn](#):
>
> Would you welcome a Pull Request implementing this change proposal?
Totally 👍
> [@dbolkensteyn](#):
>
> If so, do you foresee any challenges?
It depends mostly on your Rails/Ember-fu 😉
But I don’t think this has to do with public/private instance as we can use this feature in our internal instance as well 😉
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 5:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/4 "2019-08-02T05:56:16Z")
@codinghorror I would like us to start with something very very simple here.
Introduce a keyboard shortcut for “Toggle user timer”. Let’s say \*
- First press of \*: user timer set to 1 day on the topic
- Second press \*: user timer set to 7 days on the topic
- Third press \*: user timer set to 30 days on the topic
- Fourth press \*: user timer cleared
Then since we don’t need to fiddle with any UX or post menus and so on it is far far simpler to implement.
Sure it does not expose the feature on mobile to end users quite yet, but it does start unlocking to power desktop users.
Lately I have been setting user timers a bit and I find I struggle through all the clicks needed to set a timer.
Thoughts?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 7:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/5 "2019-08-02T07:25:04Z")
I wonder why bookmarks can’t trigger a reminder to you, e.g. you set up a “naggy” bookmark.
I wonder if a report of all pending bookmarks, kind of the way we do a report of all pending assigned topics (“that you probably forgot about” is the implication here) would be helpful. Or allowing people to set a nag interval on a bookmark, one time or repeating..
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 7:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/6 "2019-08-02T07:46:42Z")
I think this fills a different role.
“Forget about this thing completely till next week, follow up once”
vs
“This thing is important to me”
That said I would love to see bookmarks become more useful, personally I simply never use bookmarks (I also don’t use star in GMail), its basically a pointless button in the UX I have I never press.
With the topic reminder I am assigning deliberate work to the computer … activate stop watch … tell me about this again in N minutes. That allows me to dump stuff off my brain stack.
Slack’s take on this is this function it exposes on in the `...` menu:
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 8:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/7 "2019-08-02T08:12:47Z")
The other reason it matters, the number of bookmarks helps tell you how _important_ a post is, alongside likes, read counter, cumulative read time, etc.
We should strengthen bookmark a lot and make it more useful.
The other weakness of “topic timers” is that they are per topic. Why? Why can’t I get reminded of two different posts in the same topic at different times.. or pick the first post if I want a “topic” bookmark reminder. Having this be per post is more logical / flexible and is already how bookmarks work.
I would love bookmark to be improved to be the “remind me about this” feature because it already is, it just never nags you like it _should_..
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 1:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/8 "2019-08-02T13:26:25Z")
It think would be useful to have this feature.
I have tried using bookmarks, but never remember to look at them. I can’t even find them on mobile.
Topic level would probably be fine. There are few topics here that are long enough that I’d need multiple reminders. It might also allow people to game the importance of a topic by seeing reminders on all posts.
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### Author:  [@seanblue](https://meta.discourse.org/u/seanblue)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/9 "2019-08-02T13:57:48Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> I have tried using bookmarks, but never remember to look at them.
Same. They are too hard to search, and I just rarely remember to look at them anyway.
* * *
Regarding the feature request, I would definitely find this useful. I think for my purposes topic level reminders would be enough. Maybe it would be best to start there and iterate if there’s demand for post level reminders?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/10 "2019-08-14T13:24:43Z")
Post reminder shortcuts would save me a LOT of clicks 😮
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 9:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/11 "2019-08-14T21:53:43Z")
Needs to be derived from existing bookmark feature improvements first before we go adding even more random features.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/12 "2019-08-14T22:03:04Z")
I just don’t know how you would get any fidelity with bookmarks, we would need another bookmark button or some button on the bookmarks page
I guess we could hack this magic into bookmarks with a keyboard shortcut, I am just not sure how this would work
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/13 "2019-08-14T22:16:12Z")
It is really quite simple, go look at the slack screenshot you posted and imagine that happening on bookmark invoke. Same thing.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/14 "2019-08-14T22:17:56Z")
Every time you bookmark?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 10:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/15 "2019-08-14T22:22:02Z")
How often do you bookmark today? Oh wait I will answer for you
> [@sam](#):
>
> I simply never use bookmarks
So the idea is to improvinate Bookmark into a useful feature that _actually does something people need._
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 10:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/16 "2019-08-14T22:25:44Z")
On a personal level I would be happy to replace bookmarks with post reminders
They are conceptually very diff, a post reminder is hidden, reminds you once, and then goes away
Bookmarks are there till you make a move and remove
Bookmarkinders, are always visible, require action to remove and remind you
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2019, 11:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/17 "2019-08-14T23:10:02Z")
I violently disagree - bookmarks are conceptually no different at all, they just have infinite duration and no nagging. Same as tying a string around your finger, remember “something” on “someday”.
Either way we need to improvinate bookmarks so they are a feature that actually helps people and gets used.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2019, 7:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/18 "2019-11-06T07:08:23Z")
I think the slack screenshot encapsulates what we should do with bookmarks quite well, _except_ we also want people to be able to annotate the bookmark, as in _why did I want to be reminded of this, again?_
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Same as tying a string around your finger, remember “something” on “someday”.
The status quo is .. bad. 👆🎗
Imagine if the menu above had a “REMIND ME ABOUT THIS: NEVER” option – that’s what we have now. If it seems crappy and useless, that’s because it is!
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### Author:  [@Anatolia](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Anatolia)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2020, 1:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/19 "2020-01-02T13:29:47Z")
Has this menu item always been there?
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2020, 1:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508/20 "2020-01-02T13:42:30Z")
It’s new, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to use it quite yet. @martin has been working on some awesome bookmark changes which are almost finished - they will be announced and enabled on meta as soon as they’re ready. Watch this space 👀
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-all-users-to-set-topic-reminders/101508.md?page=2)