Notifications too early

This is your phone doing it. Nothing to do with the watch.

My suggestion, try a different reminder app.

Going to try that. Do you happen to have any suggestions for good apps for this purpose?

I used the built-in countdown timer. Simple and works perfectly.

That's not going to work for my purpose. I need to take my meds at set times, not at set intervals.

Also, I need the reminders on both watch and phone, so I have a backup if 1 fails. But I don't want to have to keep track of setting them up in multiple places.

Understood.

Then it's probably best to stick with your original (albeit currently problematic) solution.

As @muppetman has already mentioned, this is most likely an issue with the app your are using on your phone.

I know with the macOS/iOS Calendar apps that reminders can be configured to alert the user hours or minutes before the actual event occurs. I'd check this in the calendar/scheduling app you are using just to be sure.

I assume you are talking about the Samsung upcoming alarm notifications, and those showing on the watch? You can turn the upcoming alarm notifications off, might depend a little on the phone. But for example Settings > Apps > Clock > Notifications > Upcoming alarms (or swipe+hold on the upcoming alarm notification and choose the gear icon to get directly to its notification settings).

Exactly the same for me. first it was 5 minutes, which was annoying but acceptable, then out of nowhere it went to 30 minutes, which in my case is completely unusable.

The time change probably happened with a software update or something...

I have now tested with the Google clock app, but even though permissions are set correctly, there's no notification of the alarm on my watch. the silly thing is that when I snooze the alarm on my phone, a notification of the snooze action *is* sent to the watch.

Going to try Bitti's solution next

So, I've spent a little time testing various clock/alarm apps...

A little summary, hopefully it'll help someone in a similar situation.

My requirements:
- A single point to manage the alarms
- Alarm/notification on both my phone and my watch
- Early notification sent to watch a maximum of 5 minutes before the actual alarm time
- Ability to name the alarm (and name getting sent with notification) so it is easily identified
- Notification on watch should be long enough to be noticed


What I've tried so far:

Samsung Clock app:
Used to come up with notification 5 minutes early, recently changed to 30 minutes early (this is what makes it unusable for my purpose).
As Bitti pointed out you can disable the early notification, the problem is that it wont alarm on the watch, not even at alarm time. Controls from the watch to dismiss the alarm etc are good though.

After encountering the 5 mins becomes 30 mins issue, I tried the following alarm clock apps:

Google Clock app:
This was pretty useless, there was no notification on the watch at alarm time, but cancelling or snoozing the alarm in the app did send a notification to the watch.

Garmin Connect app:
Works like a charm for alarms on the watch, but no alarm on my phone and no option to assign a name to the alarm.

Better Alarm app:
This came close to a workable solution, but it's finicky and I had problems in reproducing the desired results. With the settings I needed to use to get it to do what I wanted, acknowledging the alarm on my phone at alarm time became a bit finicky. Also, the notifications on the watch are too short to be noticable while you're active.

Simple Alarm:
Works, but only 1 short vibration on the watch as the alarm time is reached, which makes it hard to miss if you're active. Especially because there is no visual indication, so even if you did notice the vibration and look at your watch, there will be no clue that your alarm went.

Alarm Clock (by Vmons) app:
No notifications on watch.

Galarm - Alarms & Reminders app:
This one mostly does what I want it to. Alarm on phone, simultaneous notification on watch. Name of the alarm is displayed on the watch. The vibration on the watch is short, but at least the notification remains on screen. You can also end the alarm on the phone from the menu on the watch, which is a nice touch.
There are some downsides too, the setup of the alarms isn't the most user friendly, but it'll do. And while the basic app provides all the features I need, there are subscription based premium features and everytime you accidentally touch something relating to a premium feature, you get transported to the subscription page right away. But as I don't change my alarms very often after the initial set up, that's something I can live with.
I'm going to try this one in daily life for a while.


Skipped:

Alarm Clock Beyond app:
Feature set looks ok, but reviews on ad behaviour put me off. Apparently ads remain on your screen when the alarm is stopped, requiring you to manually close the ads. That's a big no from me, with this kind of thing I don't even want to try it, even if an ad free paid version is available.

Alarmy app:
Seemed like a good candidate, but long time happy users are now complaining about reliability. I might check this one in a few months to see if the recently introduced bugs are fixed.