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Guide · Water

Water reminders for developers that skip your meetings.

Most hydration apps nag on a timer, so the ping lands in the middle of a call and you swipe it away. A reminder you dismiss all day is worse than none. Here’s a setup that works around how you actually work.

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short answer

What is the best way to remember to drink water at a desk?

Tie water to a cadence during work hours, like a glass every hour or so, and make each reminder one tap to log. Skip reminders during meetings and quiet hours, and refill your bottle whenever you get up. Hitting a simple daily count matters more than the exact amount.

How much is enough?

The US National Academies put adequate total water intake at about 2.7 liters a day for women and 3.7 liters for men, counting water from food as well as drinks, with drinks making up about 80 percent of it. They also note that most healthy people meet their needs by letting thirst guide them (National Academies, 2004).

The catch for developers is that thirst is easy to tune out in deep focus, the same way hunger is. A simple goal, such as a number of glasses during the workday, gives you something to notice. Cronch starts at 8 glasses and you can change it. If you have a medical reason to drink more or less, follow your doctor rather than an app.

What makes a water reminder stick

  1. A cadence, not a countdown

    A glass every 45 to 120 minutes during work hours is easy to keep. A ping every 15 minutes is noise you’ll learn to ignore.

  2. Quiet during meetings

    If the reminder fires mid-call, push it to right after the call ends instead of dropping it.

  3. Quiet hours that are actually quiet

    No pings before your day starts or after it ends. A late-night water ping is the fastest way to turn reminders off for good.

  4. One tap to log

    Done means one glass. If logging needs a form or a slider, you’ll skip it on busy days, which are the days that matter.

  5. Pair it with moving

    Refill the bottle when you stand up for a break. Water and a short walk happen together, and both get done.

What it looks like in a day

Here is a workday with a 60-minute cadence and two meetings. Water alternates with short breaks, and the 10:00 ping waits until standup is over.

todayexample
09:35  breakfast
10:00  standup # meeting, pings wait
10:17  water  # moved after standup
11:30  stretch
12:30  lunch
13:30  water
14:30  eye break, 20-20-20
15:30  1:1 # meeting
16:02  water  # after the 1:1
17:45  wind down

How Cronch does it

  • Water pings run on your cadence (every 45, 60, 90 or 120 minutes) during work hours, alternating with short breaks.
  • Pings move to after the meetings you add and never fire in quiet hours.
  • If your goal needs more glasses than there are water pings, the break pings ask for a glass too.
  • Each glass is one tap: Done in the email, on the dashboard, /water in the agent, or log_water from Claude or ChatGPT.
  • A ring on the Today dashboard shows where you are against your goal, and History shows glasses per day.

Prefer your phone to do the reminding? Download the day as an .ics file and your calendar app handles the alerts. Water is one part of the plan, alongside meals and breaks.

Questions

Do I need a smart bottle or a tracker?

No. Counting glasses is enough to build the habit. Cronch doesn’t connect to bottles or wearables.

Does coffee count?

Water from all drinks and food counts toward total intake in the National Academies figures. Cronch keeps it simple and counts glasses of water you mark done.

Put water on a schedule.

Cronch is in private beta. Join the waitlist and you’ll get one email with your invite when your spot is ready.

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