Free medication reminders
Your reminders should not need a subscription.
Pillbell reminds you to take up to ten medications a day, keeps a profile for everyone you look after, and stores it all on your own device. No account. No monthly fee. No country left out.
Set up your first reminder
Write down what you take and when. The plan stays in this browser, and you can carry it straight into Pillbell — the app reads the file this page gives you.
0 of 10 medications. Reminders for every one of them, at no charge.
Nothing in the plan yet. Add the first medication above.
Get Pillbell
One download, then it is yours. It runs offline, it does not ask who you are, and nothing about it can be switched off from our end.
Version 0.6.0 · Checksum (Linux) · Checksum (Windows)
On Arch Linux: add the Pixygon repo and run pacman -S pillbell.
Why this exists
People who take three, five or eight medications a day have leaned on a reminder app for years. Then the free tier goes away. The reviews say the same two things over and over: the app started charging an annual fee for reminders that used to be free, or it simply stopped working for anyone outside the United States.
A reminder to take your pills is not a premium feature. It costs almost nothing to send, and the people who need it most — the elderly, the chronically ill, the family member checking in — are the worst ones to bill by the month. So Pillbell sends them for free, to everyone, everywhere, and keeps your list where nobody can hold it hostage: on your own machine.
How it works
1. Write your list once
Up to ten medications, each with the times of day and the days of the week it is taken. A weekly tablet is as easy as a daily one.
2. Pillbell tells you when
A desktop notification at the minute, and a bar across the top of the window that stays until you answer. Taken, skipped, or snoozed — one click each.
3. Somebody can check
Every profile keeps its own history. Seven days at a glance tells a carer whether Mum's Tuesday was fine, without a phone call that feels like an interrogation.
4. Two devices, no account
Point Pillbell at a file in a folder you already sync — Dropbox, Nextcloud, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, even a memory stick. Both machines read and write it, and the newest change to each medication wins.
For the person doing the checking
Most reminder apps price a second person as a second subscription. Pillbell has profiles instead: as many as you need, in the same window, free. Switch between them, see what is due for each, and read the last seven days on one screen.
Where your data lives
In one JSON file on your own machine, which you can open, copy, back up or delete. Pillbell needs no network to do its job and has no account to lock you out of. Nothing about your medications is sent to us, because there is nowhere for it to go.
What it costs
Nothing. All ten medications, every profile, every reminder, in every country.
If Pillbell saved you a subscription and you would like to pay for it anyway, the button below takes one payment, once. It is not a licence and not an unlock: nothing is withheld from anyone who never presses it. The amount is what the thing costs to make plus a little, and it will not become a monthly one.
Pay for Pillbell · 29 NOK · one paymentQuestions people ask
Is it really free, or free for a while?
Free. There is no trial, no account and no server we can switch off. Once the app is on your machine it keeps working whether or not we are still here.
Why only ten medications?
Because ten covers a genuinely full tray, and a cap we can honour for free forever is better than an unlimited promise that turns into a subscription later. If you look after someone else, they get their own list of ten.
Does it work outside the United States and Europe?
Everywhere. There is no regional store check and no payment step to fail — you download one file and it runs. Times are your device's own local time.
Can my daughter see whether I took my pills?
If you both point Pillbell at the same synced file, yes — she sees the same list and the same history you do. That is a choice you make by putting the file somewhere you both reach, not a feature we switch on.
What if my computer dies?
Settings → Write a backup gives you a single file to keep wherever you like, and Restore reads it back on a new machine. The sync file does the same job continuously.
Guides
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