Why Do My Expo Android Local Notifications Trigger Immediately Instead of Being Scheduled?

Try the above code mentioned by Mohammad, if the array is not empty and you are still facing the same issue as in the issue of it not scheduling the notification then you should define the type of the notification - In my application I'm using a date that is calculated from an API and so i use type: Notifications.SchedulableTriggerInputTypes.DATE in my scheduleNotificationAsync function then inside that function trigger then type - Please note there are multiple types of notification schedulable triggers so you should experiment to see which one best fits your needs - Thanks for taking the time to read this =)

The issue you’re encountering is typically caused by the way the trigger time is calculated relative to the current time. When you schedule a notification with a trigger that specifies an absolute time (using properties like hour and minute) and set repeats: true, Expo will calculate the next occurrence of that time based on the device’s local time. If you call your scheduling function after the specified time has already passed for the day, the notification is triggered immediately (since the “next” occurrence is interpreted as “now”) and then will repeat starting the following day.

One way to fix this is to explicitly calculate the next occurrence of your desired trigger time. For example, if you want to schedule a notification daily at 20:10, you can write a helper function that returns a Date object for the next occurrence of that time:

JAVASCRIPTCopied
function getNextTriggerDate(hour, minute) {
  const now = new Date();
  const trigger = new Date();
  trigger.setHours(hour, minute, 0, 0);
  // If the trigger time has already passed today, schedule it for tomorrow
  if (trigger <= now) {
    trigger.setDate(trigger.getDate() + 1);
  }
  return trigger;
}

Then, you can modify your scheduling function to use this calculated date:

JAVASCRIPTCopied
async function scheduleDailyNotification() {
  await createNotificationChannel();
  await Notifications.cancelAllScheduledNotificationsAsync(); // Clears old schedules

  // Calculate the next trigger date for 20:10
  const triggerDate = getNextTriggerDate(20, 10);

  await Notifications.scheduleNotificationAsync({
    content: {
      title: "Daily Reminder",
      body: "It is a scheduled notification!",
      sound: "default",
      priority: Notifications.AndroidNotificationPriority.MAX,
    },
    trigger: triggerDate,  // Ensures the first trigger is in the future
  });

  // For debugging: log all scheduled notifications
  const scheduled = await Notifications.getAllScheduledNotificationsAsync();
  console.log("Scheduled Notifications:", scheduled);
}

By ensuring that the trigger time is always in the future, you prevent the notification from firing immediately upon scheduling. Keep in mind that if you’re testing in developer mode (e.g. using Expo Go), the behavior of scheduled notifications can sometimes differ from that in a production build. Testing with an EAS build can help you verify the correct behavior.