Apple Calendar notifications stop working periodically

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Level 2

150 points

Apple Calendar notifications stop working periodically

I keep having a problem with Calendar in that every 2-4 weeks it stops sending notifications. Apple phone support gave me a recovery process (create a new calendar, move the events from the old calendar to the new calendar) and that fixes it for the time being, but eventually the notifications stop again and I have to repeat the process. It's already happened twice this month, and has been happening once or twice a month since it started in April of this year.

Since I started to track it, it happened on or about 6/26/25, 7/12, 8/2, 8/20, 9/8, 9/25, 10/4, 10/19, 11/3, and 11/17. These are the dates I noticed the problem and fixed it using the Apple Support procedure; it's possible in one or more of those cases, I didn't notice the missing notifications for a day or three.

Does anybody have a way to fix this issue permanently?

I've already provided Apple with feedback on this. I am running the latest OS, 26.1.

Mac mini, macOS 26.1

Posted on Nov 17, 2025 10:38 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 18, 2025 8:21 AM in response to Charles Belov

Charles Belov wrote:

I keep having a problem with Calendar in that every 2-4 weeks it stops sending notifications.

Apple phone support gave me a recovery process (create a new calendar, move the events from the old calendar to the new calendar) and that fixes it for the time being, but eventually the notifications stop again and I have to repeat the process. It's already happened twice this month, and has been happening once or twice a month since it started in April of this year.

Since I started to track it, it happened on or about 6/26/25, 7/12, 8/2, 8/20, 9/8, 9/25, 10/4, 10/19, 11/3, and 11/17.

I noticed the problem and fixed it using the Apple Support procedure; it's possible in one or more of those cases, I didn't notice the missing notifications for a day or three.

re: Calendar.app

Have not read this as an issue.

You had this issue before Tahoe dropped (9/15/2025) so unrelated to the current 26.1

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus and compare your results.

all known to cause issues on the macOS

ref: Calendar User Guide for Mac

To trouble shoot further you can:

—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.

***wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries— connect the charging cable, this will make the wired keyboard successful Safe Boot your Mac.

unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing

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Answer 2

Charles Belov Author

Level 2

150 points

Nov 18, 2025 8:48 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thank you for the recs. Rather than mess with my anti-virus (I don't have any of the other programs you mentioned, and my keyboard is wired), I went directly to doing a safe boot. Much simpler and I can be sure I got everything. Going forward, I need to learn to make safe booting my first test.

While in safe mode, I created four alarms 5 minutes apart:

1st on known good current calendar
2nd on a prior bad calendar that I had previously transferred all items to a new calendar
3rd on another prior bad calendar that I had previously transferred all items to a new calendar
4th on the known good current calendar

I got all four alerts.

I rebooted into normal mode, and re-set the times on all four alerts to sound again. I got all four alerts once again, so, I'm wondering, when I transferred the alerts from apparently corrupted calendars to the new calendar, essentially emptying out the old calendars, did that fix the corruption in the old calendar?

I will try using the Calendar app on another user on this computer that I use regularly and see if it turns up there. It may take a while, since the issue only happens every 2-4 weeks.

While I was testing, I noticed Calendar also has a feature to transfer all events to a new calendar when you delete an old one. I'll give that a try as well as opposed to manually transferring all the events. (Of course I'll make sure I've backed things up first.)

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