Test DX Reminder Alarm: Prove It Works Before the Rare One
The rare station comes on the air once, and it stays for a few minutes. If the alarm fails that day, no repair afterwards will bring the contact back. That is why it is worth a quarter of an hour to test DX Reminder alarm behaviour on the day before you need it, in the same conditions in which it must work: phone silenced, screen locked, battery saver on, the app not open. This article is a practical checklist. It covers the permissions that the alarm depends on, the states of the phone that can hold it back, a method of generating a real alarm without waiting for a DXpedition, and the checks for the desktop and iPhone versions. Everything here rests on how the app is documented on ly4a.com and in its list of changes.
What Has to Be True for an Alarm to Ring
An alarm is the end of a chain, and each link can fail quietly. The app must be running in the background and checking at the interval you chose, one of 1, 5, 10 or 30 minutes. It must find your callsign, band and mode in one of the five sources. It must decide that this is a new appearance and not a repeat that you already heard. And it must be allowed by the operating system to show a notification, to sound it on the alarm channel and to wake a locked screen. The first two links are the responsibility of the app. The last link belongs to the phone, and it is where most surprises hide.
The app helps with the most common problems. On the first launch it asks for notification permission, because without it the alarm cannot appear, and the changelog records a warning for the case in which notifications are turned off, a state in which the app used to keep watching with nothing to show for it. On Android 14 and later, full-screen alarms are given only to apps that the system treats as alarm clocks, and battery saving can pause the watching. Since version 4.2 the settings check both conditions and lead you straight to the right system screen. The test below makes sure that those checks are green.
Test One: The Permissions
Open the app settings and look for any warning. If one is shown, tap it and follow it to the system screen, then return and check that it has gone. Then check four things in the phone’s own settings:
- Notifications for the app are on, and the alarm category is not set to silent.
- Alarms and reminders permission is allowed, if the app asks for it. Without it the system may delay checks.
- Battery: the app is not restricted. A power-saving mode that pauses background work will also pause the watching.
- Do Not Disturb: know what your phone does with alarms in this mode. Alarms are normally allowed through, but some phones have a setting that blocks them, so look at it once.
The longer discussion of these settings is in the article on the alarm on a silent phone. The point of the test is not to read the theory again but to confirm that your own phone is in the right state.
Test Two: Generate a Real Alarm Yourself
Waiting for a rare callsign to prove that the alarm works is waiting for the wrong moment. A better way is to give the app something that will appear soon. There are two simple ways.
Use a busy station. Open a public DX cluster page such as DXSummit or DXHeat and find a callsign that is being spotted now on a band and a mode that the app supports, for example an FT8 or CW station on 20 metres. Add it to the app with only that band and mode ticked, set the repeat interval to “on every new spot”, and wait. When a spotter reports the same station again, the alarm should ring within the interval of the sources. This test checks the whole chain with data from the real world. When it has rung, remove the callsign so that it does not ring all evening.
Use your own callsign. If you are on the air, the best test source is yourself. Add your own callsign, tick the band and mode you are about to use, and make a few calls. For FT8, any receiver that decodes you sends a report to PSK Reporter, and the live feed brings the report to the app within seconds, as the article on the live PSK Reporter feed explains. For CW, a skimmer that hears your CQ may report you through the Reverse Beacon Network. The test is also a pleasant check of your own signal: it shows how fast the world hears you. Use it only in your normal operating, with the power and modes that your licence allows, and remove your callsign afterwards.
Keep in mind the rule that CW means real CW only, and that FT8 and FT4 are separate. If you tick CW and transmit FT8, nothing will ring, and the test will seem to fail. Match the cell to the mode that you actually use.
Test Three: The Hard Conditions
With a callsign that rings reliably, repeat the test in the situations that matter. Change one condition at a time and write down the result.
| Condition | How to set it | What should happen |
|---|---|---|
| Phone on silent | Switch the ringer to silent or vibrate | The alarm still sounds on the alarm channel |
| Screen locked | Lock the phone and put it on the table | The alarm wakes the screen or shows a full-screen alert |
| App closed | Swipe the app away from the recent list | Watching continues in the background |
| Battery saver on | Turn on the power-saving mode | The alarm still rings, or the app warns you |
| After a reboot | Restart the phone, do not open the app | Watching resumes by itself |
| Screen turned sideways | Rotate the phone during an alarm | Stop and Snooze remain reachable |
The line about the reboot rests on the description of the app: it keeps running in the background and after a reboot. The line about the sideways screen reflects the fix recorded in version 3.5, when a long callsign could once push Stop out of sight. If any row fails on your phone, the cause is nearly always a system setting, and the warnings in the app settings are the first place to look.
Test Four: The Controls
When the alarm rings, press the buttons. Stop and Snooze are on the notification itself, visible without expanding it, and the full-screen alarm closes and stops if you press Back. Try each one. Check what Snooze does for the time that you set, and confirm that Stop ends the sound and does not leave the screen stuck. If you chose your own alarm sound, either one of the system alarm sounds or a music file, listen to it in the room where the phone will lie at night. A file that you deleted by accident does not silence the app, because the system sound comes back instead, but it is good to learn that now. The details of these controls are in the article on alarm settings.
Test Five: The Interval and the Repeat Behaviour
The app gives one alarm per callsign, band and mode, and the newest spot is the one shown. How soon the same combination may ring again is your choice: on every new spot, or every 1, 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes. During the test, use “on every new spot” to see the alarm fast. Before the real event, change the setting to the value that you want, and test again once, so that you know that the setting you saved is the setting that runs. The setting applies to one combination, and the other ones still ring at once, which you can check by adding a second test callsign on a different band.
Checking the Desktop Version
On Windows and macOS the same ideas apply with different details. The app keeps running from the tray when you close the window, and quitting is done from the tray menu, so the first check is to close the window and confirm that the tray icon is still there. The alarm interval works on the desktop, and since version 1.5 the PSK Reporter feed arrives live over MQTT, so the own-callsign test works on the computer too. Make sure that the system notification settings do not hide the alarm, that the sound is not muted and that the computer does not go to sleep when you leave it. A sleeping computer is the desktop version of a silent phone. The article on the desktop version covers the first run.
Checking the iPhone Version
An iPhone cannot watch the clusters in the background by itself, so the site does the watching and sends the alarm through Apple’s push service. That changes what to test. Check that notifications are allowed for the app in the iPhone settings, and that Focus modes do not block it. Then run the test with a busy station as above. If the alert is late or missing, remember that the chain includes the site, Apple’s service and the phone. The article on iPhone push alerts explains the path and the common reasons for a missing alert.
What to Write Down
Keep a short note of the result of each test, with the date, the phone model, the version of the app and the settings that you changed. A line such as “silent mode ok, locked screen ok, battery saver ok after allowing the alarm permission” is enough. The note has two uses. When something stops working after an update of the phone, you can see at once which row of the table used to pass. And when you help a friend set up the app, you know which settings caused trouble on your own device and can point to them first. A tester who writes things down also notices patterns, for example that the alarm is always a minute later on a certain source, which is useful when you decide how short the check interval should be.
Make the Test a Routine
A single test proves the present state, and the phone changes. A system update may reset a permission, a new battery saver may be enabled, or the app itself may be updated. Make the quick test a routine: before every major event, such as a DXpedition you want or a contest weekend, run the short sequence of permissions, a live alarm with silent mode and a locked screen, and a look at the status line of the app. On Android the status line reads “PSKR live” while the live connection to the broker is up, which tells you at a glance that the fast feed is connected. If it does not, the app falls back to queries, which still work but are slower. Five minutes of testing is cheap compared with a missed new one.
The Bottom Line
To test DX Reminder alarm behaviour properly, check the permissions that the system gives the app, create a real alarm with a busy station or with your own callsign, and repeat it with the phone silenced, the screen locked, the app closed, the battery saver on and after a reboot. Press Stop and Snooze, listen to your alarm sound, and confirm that the repeat interval is the one you chose. On the desktop, check the tray and the sleep settings, and on the iPhone, check notifications and Focus modes. Do it again before every important event and the alarm will be a tool you can trust.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I test DX Reminder without waiting for a rare callsign?
Add a callsign that is being spotted now on a band and mode you tick, or add your own callsign and make a few FT8 or CW calls. Remove the test entry afterwards.
Why did my test not ring even though the station was spotted?
Check that the cell matches the band and mode of the spot. CW means real CW only, and FT8 and FT4 are separate. Also check the repeat interval and the notification permission.
Does the alarm work when the phone is on silent?
It is designed to: the alarm plays on the alarm channel and can wake a locked screen. Confirm it on your own phone, because settings such as Do Not Disturb can differ.
Will the app keep watching after a restart of the phone?
Yes, the app keeps running in the background and after a reboot. A test restart shows that it is true for your phone.
How often should I repeat the test?
Before every important event and after a system or app update, since a permission or battery setting may have changed.
What does the status line “PSKR live” mean?
On Android it means that the connection to the PSK Reporter live feed is up. Without it the app uses queries, which work but are slower.