How to get reminded before your passport or ID expires
A passport rarely expires at a convenient time. Usually it is noticed at a visa application or an airline check-in, when there is no longer time to renew it calmly. A reminder set once, well ahead, fixes that for good.
How early is early enough?
Earlier than the expiry date suggests, because the date that matters is usually not the printed one.
- Passports: six months or more. Many countries want your passport valid for at least six months beyond your trip, others — the Schengen area, for one — ask for three months beyond the day you leave, and airlines check before you board. Add the time renewal takes, which varies with the season, and a reminder nine months to a year ahead is not too early. Check the rules for where you are going on your government’s travel advice pages.
- In India, Passport Seva lets you apply to re-issue a passport in the year before it expires.
- In the US, check the State Department’s current processing times at travel.state.gov before you plan a trip — they change through the year.
- Driving licences: a few months. In India you can apply to renew a licence on the Parivahan Sarathi site up to a year before it expires; in the US each state’s DMV sets its own window, often several months ahead.
- Visas and residence permits: as early as the rules allow. These are the costliest to let lapse, so check how early you may apply the day you receive one.
- Insurance and bank cards: a month. Cards usually arrive by themselves; the reminder is to check the new one came, and to update the places that charge it.
Setting a reminder on iPhone
With the Calendar app
- Find the expiry date on the document.
- In Calendar, add an event on the day you want to start renewing — nine months before a passport expires, say — called “Renew passport”. A calendar alert can only warn you days or weeks ahead, so the event itself has to be early.
- Tap Alert and choose when to be told. Once one alert is set, a Second Alert appears for another.
- Add a second event on the expiry date itself, so the date is there to see.
With the Reminders app
Create a reminder with a date on the day you want to start renewing, not the day it expires. Reminders suit a to-do (“book passport appointment”) better than a date to watch.
Either way, leave the document number out of the title. Calendar events sync, get shared with family calendars, and show on the lock screen; “Passport expires” is enough.
Keep every expiry in one view
One reminder is easy. The difficulty is the dozen documents a household has — two passports, two licences, a car’s insurance and its pollution certificate, three cards — each with its own date. Typing them all into a calendar is the step people skip.
Document Organiser reads the expiry date from passports, driving licences, cards and the other documents it recognises. Six months ahead it marks the document #Expiring, and #Expired once the date has passed, so the library shows at a glance what needs attention. From any document’s screen you can add reminders to Calendar — several for one document if you like — in a calendar of its own called Documents, and no reminder ever contains a card or ID number.
A once-a-year check
- Go through every passport, licence, ID and policy in the household and note the expiry dates.
- Set a reminder for each, well before the date.
- Replace the copies on your phone as the renewed documents arrive — see how to keep a passport copy on your iPhone safely.