In Your Face review: Put event reminders where you can’t miss them

Price when reviewed

In your face: $5.99

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If there’s one person on the planet who pays attention to all the reminders he sets about upcoming appointments and never misses one, well, he wishes there was a Nobel Prize Committee in attendance that could give him an award. Most of us have a little more trouble sorting through distractions to stay on target, even when we’ve had the presence of mind for a computer, phone, or table to remind us!

In Your Face for macOS takes a simple idea and makes it powerful and compelling. When it’s time for an event alert, it fills the entire screen with a modal dialog that you need to click to close. If you have two more screens, you can choose to fill them all.

This might sound off-putting if it was something that Apple introduced by default. Instead, it’s an app that you can buy and control. Choose which calendars to include. Modify the time before an event that you will be notified. Skip certain events. Everything is at your fingertips.

When you install and launch In Your Face for the first time, you are prompted to select calendars from those linked through Internet Accounts or the Calendar application. The list view dialog can’t be expanded, a bit of an issue choosing, but relevant when you have a few dozen calendars across multiple services.

You also select how early you want to receive your full screen headshot alert. You can modify this later and customize that interval for individual events.

From then on, the reminders on those calendars appear at the specified time. That screen tells you, “Don’t forget your appointment!” and put the details below that. If you have set notes, you can click a button to reveal them, including links. In Your Face includes a video icon for links to video conferencing services that you can click directly on. There is a big orange OK button to click to dismiss it.

But you are not stuck. You can snooze the alert for 1 or 5 minutes or click Customize this event to set unique parameters: exclude yourself from In Your Face alerts or set a custom alert time before the event.

You can set this before an event is triggered by selecting the next reminder in the In Your Face system menu. That creates a preview of the alert and you can then customize it.

If calendar-based events aren’t right for you, you can create reminders within In Your Face. Choose New Reminder from the app’s system menu, set a reminder name, note, date, time, and interval, and then click Add Reminder. These reminders are only managed internally.

Interestingly, even though you can create an In Your Face reminder, the app doesn’t pull alerts set as reminders from the system, apparently because reminders aren’t designed around events, but actions you need to take. It would be an improvement if you could choose to also include Reminders entries.

For a modest app, In Your Face could have a huge impact on the lives of people struggling to keep their internal clock and external attention ticking.

With the strong resurgence of the Mac in recent years, we want to celebrate the tools we use and that readers recommend to get the most out of your macOS experience. Mac Gems highlights great bits of Mac software, apps that have great utility, have a sharp focus on a narrow set of problems to solve, and are generally developed by an individual or small business. Stay tuned for weekly updates and send your suggestions to the Mac Gems Twitter feed (@macgems).