Publishing via reminder notifications
- To use reminder notifications, you'll need to grant Instagram access to All Photos in your phone's settings and download Buffer's mobile app (available on iOS and Android).
- Publishing via mobile reminder notifications is currently a beta feature and available for Instagram only. However we are planning on expanding this to other channels in the future, including Facebook Groups, TikTok, Pinterest personal profiles, and YouTube Shorts.
In this article:
- How to identify reminder notifications in the queue or calendar
- Finishing a post using reminder notifications
- Finding your past reminder notifications
- Adjusting posting default to using reminder notifications only
- Resetting post reminder notifications
- Who receives the reminder notification when it’s time to post
How to identify reminder notifications in the queue or calendar
Posts scheduled as reminder notifications will display a bell icon in the queue and calendar:
Finishing a post using reminder notifications
- When it's time for your post to be published, you'll receive a push notification to your phone. Tapping the alert will bring you to a preview of your Instagram post within the Buffer mobile app.
- From there, tap Open in Instagram.
📝 If you missed the push notification, you can always re-trigger it by heading to the Past Reminders tab.
- If you're managing multiple Instagram accounts, make sure you are switched to the correct account before you publish your post.
- You can then choose whether to post to your Feed or Story.
- Once inside Instagram, crop your image, use filters, enhance your video with music, add stickers, and publish your post just as you would if you were sharing your post or story natively.
- For posts that contain multiple images, tap into your photo library to find all of your scheduled images.
To insert your caption, tap in the caption area on iOS or tap the Aa option on Android to paste it in from your phone’s clipboard.
📝 Pre-scheduled locations will not be included on posts sent through as reminder notifications, so you may wish to add the location back in before sharing the post.
Finding your post reminder notifications
On web
On the web version of Buffer, go to the Sent tab, find the post you'd like to share and select Share Again.
Adjusting posting default to using reminder notifications only
If you would prefer for all posts to be scheduled and sent as reminder notifications, you can do that in the settings area of the mobile app.
- Tap the menu bar in the top left of your screen.
- Select your Instagram channel.
- Tap Settings in the bottom right of your screen.
- Under the "Instagram" area, toggle "Disable Direct Scheduling" ON.
To find this setting on web, select your Instagram channel, then choose Settings > General and make sure "Enable Reminder Notifications by default" is Enabled.
Resetting post reminder notifications
If reminder notifications are not coming through to your phone, please follow the steps below.
- Open the Buffer app on your mobile device and tap the menu bar in the top left of your screen.
- Scroll to the bottom of the list of your channels and tap Signout.
- Log back into the Buffer app.
- Tap the Settings icon at the bottom right of your screen.
- Tap the Account Settings tab.
- Tap Push Notifications.
- Tap Reset Push Notifications or RESET.
Who receives the reminder notification when it’s time to post?
When it's time for one of your Instagram posts to be published (assuming it wasn't published automatically), we'll send a push notification to whichever mobile devices have been connected to your Buffer account. This includes both the account owner and any users who have been invited to the Instagram account with Full Posting Access. Learn more about user permissions here.