Moto Z, Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur!

[gf1701]

Ever since I’ve had my Moto Z phone (about 2 years now), calendar notifications have worked sporadically, and more often then not, it fails to alert me. At first I figured that it was a bug in the default Google calendar that came with the phone, so I installed the DigiCal calendar app. I like the app, but it has had the same problem. The calendar on my tablet (default app) is synced to the phone calendar, and it successfully alerts me even when the phone doesn’t. I’ve searched for answers in the past, but never found anything; most of what I found applies to devices where the calendar NEVER notifies, which is not the case here. I have no idea why I occasionally DO receive alerts. (Maybe it’s when they coincide with the display active, instead of in sleep mode? That’s the only thing I can guess, but I really don’t know if it’s so.) Notifications are on for the app. Battery saver is turned off. “Show all notification content” is set for the lock screen (but Notification dots is off). I'm using Android 8.0.0. Can anyone suggest where else I can look for the cause of this problem?

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

Is the Calendar app "Battery Optimized" in the system settings? That would be different from the overall Battery Saver function.

 

[gf1701]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

It is. I was unaware of that setting. Do I need to turn it off?

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

Try turning off Battery Optimization for the Calendar app, in case it's causing the app to sleep inappropriately and not serve the notification in time.

 

[gf1701]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

Done. Thanks. I will set a bunch of test appointments for the next few days and see what happens.

 

[gf1701]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

I've run five tests over the past few days, setting six reminders, and alarms went off for each one. So this may have solved the problem. I can't be sure until more time has passed and I've used the calendar many more times. I'll post if the problem recurs. If I don't post again, that means you hit upon the solution. Thanks in any event.

 

[gf1701]

Re: Calendar notifications are sporadic--and usually fail to occur

Sadly, the streak of successful calendar alerts ended today; there were two set for an event, and there was no alert on my phone (my tablet did issue the alerts, as it always does). I checked to make sure that battery optimization was still off for the DigiCal app and it was. So the solution--if there is one--lies elsewhere.

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm, that's annoying. What if you change the type of event notification to email? This is not necessarily a suggestion for a satisfactory alternative, but might shed more light on the problem -- e.g., if the emails don't even come through on time, then it would be an issue with the whole event reminder mechanism. But if the emails came through fine and on time, then it's probably a bug with the event notification system.

 

[gf1701]

Hmm, that's annoying. What if you change the type of event notification to email? This is not necessarily a suggestion for a satisfactory alternative, but might shed more light on the problem -- e.g., if the emails don't even come through on time, then it would be an issue with the whole event reminder mechanism. But if the emails came through fine and on time, then it's probably a bug with the event notification system.

Hope you're still following this thread. I have an event on my calendar for later today that did not trigger an alarm on my phone (but did on my tablet, as usual). So I thought I would take your suggestion and try changing the notification for that event to e-mail. I edited it and added two alarms. I figured that if the first alarm did not sound an alert, I would then change the settings to e-mail before the second one's time came. But apparently, just opening the app and editing the event reset whatever it is that causes the alerts to fail on my phone, and the alert sounded (perhaps just opening the app and then closing it without doing anything would have reset it to). If I had thought about it in advance, I would have first checked the app to see if it was actually running in the background, as it should have been, before opening it. But I didn't think of it this time. I have one more question, though. These events, which I set in the DigiCal app on my phone, trigger on the default Calendar app I have on my tablet. But I'm pretty sure that I never set any option in DigiCal to make it do that. Do you know how that works, how the DigiCal event gets automatically transferred to my tablet's Calendar app? (I'm guessing that it has something to do with Google.)

 

[B. Diddy]

Ok, so try setting it as an email notification next time and just let it be.

If the DigiCal app is set up to enter events into your Google Calendar account, then it's essentially transferring all of the information you enter to your Google Calendar (including reminder notification settings).

In case it's an issue with DigiCal, you could consider temporarily uninstalling it and just using Google Calendar itself to see if the problem persists.