**Intro**
I made a video earlier this year, where I listed 10 tips to help you get more from the Reminders
app on your iPhone. But the app has seen some major improvements in the latest version of iOS,
making it more capable than ever before, and with that in mind, I thought now was as
good a time as ever to make a full tutorial video for it. In this video I’ll show you
everything you need to know about Reminders, to allow you to truly get the most out of it.
OK, let’s get into it.
**Navigation**
Opening up the app you’ll be taken straight to the Home Screen,
which is a bit more complicated than most To Do apps out there,
but it’s actually pretty simple to navigate once you know what you’re looking at.
One thing to make you aware of is this blue Upgrade button shown here. This is because
the latest version of iOS includes a number of new features in Reminders,
that aren’t backwards compatible with previous versions of Reminders,
so this is a once-only button press, once you press it there's no going back, although
as we’re going to be using a number of the new features, I am going to go ahead and press it,
you’ll need to as well if you want to carry on with everything in the video.
When you press the button, it doesn’t look like much has happened, but the more eagle eyed among
you might have noticed that there’s now 5 boxes here, and this Flagged option has appeared.
So, this section up here at the top is essentially a section of filters. We’ve
not created any reminders yet, so we don’t really have anything to filter,
but as we create new reminders, this section will all begin to make more sense.
Down here we’ve got a section called My Lists where you can, you guessed it,
create lists. Apple give you a default list called Reminders, but you can create
additional ones here if you like, you can group lists together, there’s lots we can do here.
And then finally down at the bottom of the screen,
we’ve got options for creating a new Reminder, and adding a new list.
**Reminders vs To Dos**
Firstly, we need to make an important distinction between a reminder, and a to-do item, and the
difference is actually really straightforward, but has a massive impact on how you use the app.
A reminder is something that you want to be reminded of. So for example,
being reminded to take food out of the freezer to defrost when you wake up in the morning,
or remembering to put the bins out when you get home from work. Technically,
they’re a task, you do still need to complete an action, but they’re date and time sensitive,
because you’re going to ask your device to remind you about them.
A to-do item is simply something that you need to do. A to-do item can still be time critical,
so for example you could create a to-do item, and set a completion date for it, but without
specifically asking for a reminder, you won’t be reminded about it, it will just sit in your list.
A real world analogy of this I guess is that, a reminder is like having a PA,
who interrupts whatever you’re doing to remind you of something that you need reminding about,
at a specific time. A to-do item is like writing something on a piece of paper
at your desk when you get to work, and then ticking things off as you go along.
**Creating a Reminder**
OK, with that clear, let’s create a basic reminder. There are lots of ways that we
can do it, but we’ll start with the most obvious,
we’re going to tap this New Reminder button in the bottom left corner.
I’m going to use my example from earlier on where I talked about a reminder to take
food out of the freezer in the morning when I wake up so that it can defrost,
so here in the title, I’m going to type ‘take food out of the freezer’.
Here in the Notes section, you can add whatever you like, or nothing at all. I guess in this case,
I could specify the food that I want to take out of the freezer, so I’ll write chilli in there.
Further down the screen we’ve got this shortcuts bar, which I’m going
to come back to in a moment, but for now, let’s tap on Details.
So, this is a reminder, and as I mentioned, I want to be reminded
of it at a specific date and time. So in date, I’ll choose tomorrow. Then in time,
I’m going to choose 7:30, I set my alarm for 7, usually get up about 7:15,
so at 7:30 I’ll be downstairs having breakfast, so this is a good time for the reminder to
pop up. If you get a popup like I did about allowing notifications, be sure to approve it.
We can use Tags if we like, I’m not going to right now, we’ll talk tags in a moment. Location,
When Messaging and Flag, I’m going to ignore all of these for the time being
and just go ahead and press the And button up here in the top right to create our Reminder.
So back on the Reminders screen, you can see that our Reminder has been created,
and we can view it here in the Reminders list. You can see enough information about
the reminder already, but if you want to view additional information, or edit anything,
simply tap on the reminder, then tap on the i button, and everything becomes editable.
But, the whole point of a reminder is that it’s going to sit there, without me doing anything
with it, until the date and time at which I need to be reminded of it, so we’ll leave that as it is
for now. What we’ll do instead, is bounce back to the app’s main screen, and choose Add List.
I’m going to create a list to store work related to-do items, so I’m going to call the list work,
then tap return. I’m going to choose a colour, I’ll make this grey because, ya know, work,
and then I’ll choose an appropriate icon from the list here. I’ll ignore Make into
Smart List for now, and just to show you, you can see just how many different icons you can
choose from for the list down here. I’ll choose Done, and our new list is created.
So, I’ll tap into the work list, and notice that down here in the bottom left of the screen,
we’ve got the option to add a reminder, just like we had in the previous reminders
list. You could do that if you want to, but I’m a believer of making things easy wherever you can,
so I’m going to suggest instead that we use Siri. I’m going to enable Siri,
and say ‘Add finish Powerpoint presentation to my work list’. And look what happens,
Siri adds a to-do item, not a reminder, to my work list.
And this brings us to a really important distinction when it comes to using Siri
and Reminders. You need to be clear about how to ask for something, in order to get what you want.
So for example, I could activate Siri and say ‘Remind me to phone the doctors tomorrow at 8’,
and Siri will create a reminder for me, rather than adding something to my to do list. It will
also understand the context of everything else that I said - things like ‘tomorrow’ and ‘8’,
and it uses that to flesh out the reminder, so that it shows up exactly when I want it.
And that’s the really key takeaway when it comes to using Siri - for a reminder,
say ‘remind me to’, and if it’s adding something to a list, say ‘add this item to my list’.
**More Advanced Usage**
Right, let’s look at some slightly more advanced usage. I’m going to once again tap the Add List
button, and then I’m going to create a list called Shopping. I’ll make it green,
and I’ll add a suitable icon. Now for this list, I want to be able to share it with someone else,
in my case that person would be my wife, it could of course be whoever you like.
To do that, tap this share button here. You can choose whether or not you’d like
the people you share with to be able to add other people, and then you’re going
to choose how to share the access link, I’m going to use iMessage and share this.
And you know that you’ve shared your list, when you see this new icon up at the top of the list.
Tap on that, and then choose Manage Shared List, and you’ve got options for managing
the list further, up to and including removing people from the shared list.
Shared lists are great, because watch what happens. I’ll add milk to the shopping list
using Siri, I’ll just say ‘add milk to my shopping list’, and the item is added.
But now watch what happens when the person who I’ve shared the list with starts making some
changes to the list. Updates happen in real time. So you can see they’ve added bread,
then cheddar cheese. Then perhaps they’re at the store, and they add bread to the shopping cart,
so they tick to complete that reminder, but then they realise that they want to be more
specific about the cheese, and so they add a note. You can see that this is all happening
without me having to do anything. Any changes that I make would also reflect at their end.
The example I’ve used is shopping, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t use
this for something else, like a work list for example, and share it with colleagues.
**More Advanced Reminders**
I’m going to tap into work, and then I’m going to create a new reminder. I’m going to call it
Team Meeting, and then I’m going to tap on this calendar icon here in the shortcuts
bar. This is a quick way of adding a date to the reminder, you can see that we’ve got some
contextual options like today, tomorrow, and then this Date and Time option, which allows
me to be more specific. I’ll choose that, and you can see that once we’ve input a date, we can then
choose to repeat the reminder if we like, and there are lots of options to choose from here,
including a custom option. I’ll include a time for the reminder, and then that’s done.
Let’s add another. I’m going to call this one Induction Training Plan,
and I’m going to add a note for this one. For this one, I’m going to try and better
organise my reminders by inputting a tag, I’ll create one called Training.
For good measure, I’m also going to flag this reminder,
and I’m going to set it as a high priority. I’m also going to tap into Subtasks,
and add a couple of subtasks, because this sounds like it’s related to a project,
where I’d probably need to complete some smaller tasks, in order to complete the overall task.
Notice down at the bottom, there is an option to add an image if we like,
choosing from taking a photo, adding a photo in from the library, or scanning something in.
With that done, look at the way in which our reminder is
now showing. The bold text with the 3 exclamation marks is because we made
this a high priority item. The flag is showing because we flagged it,
the tag is there because we added a tag. Here are my subtasks, which I can expand or hide.
Then, back on the main screen of Reminders, notice a couple of things. First,
Flagged has a one next to it, because our flagged reminder is now showing in there.
Second, we have this Tags section now, down at the bottom. If I tap on training,
we can see the reminder that we just created. The great thing about tags,
is that they work independent of lists, and things like groups.
Actually, let me show you how grouping works. I’m going to quickly create a new list,
I’ll call it people-related, and I’ll make it yellow and give it an emoji because why not.
Because People Related is in relation to my work, I’m going to tap and hold for just a second,
then drag that item onto the work list, and this creates a new group. I’ll call the group work,
and then what I’ll do is I’ll go into my existing work list,
tap on the ellipsis menu up here in the top right, and I’ll choose Show List Info. I’ll
then rename this to Admin, to make things a bit easier to manage. Back on the home screen,
you can see that I’ve now got two lists, but I’ve also got a group, with lists within that.
**Proper Weekly**
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**Pinning Lists**
A new feature in iOS16 is the ability to pin lists, which is great for those lists
that you use all the time. To do this, tap and hold for a second on a list,
until you see this set of options. Choose Pin, and notice how the shopping list in my case,
is now showing in a box up here at the top of the screen.
While we’re here, let’s just be clear about the other boxes. Today will filter to show you
anything with an action date of today. Scheduled will show you all reminders coming up with a
date or time reminder, regardless of when that might be. All is exactly what it sounds like,
and we’ve already mentioned flagged. Completed is a list of everything that you’ve completed,
and shopping is the list that we just pinned.
**Extra Features**
That’s almost everything covered, but let’s quickly loop back and check out a couple
of features that we missed. I’ll create a new reminder in people related, and then I’ll tap
on the info button. In URL, you can add a link to a website, if that’s useful to what you’re doing.
In location, you can use the location services of your phone to have the reminder activate
when you enter, or leave a location. So if your phone knows where you work for example,
you could use ‘remind me when I arrive at work’
for example. When messaging is also useful if you make use of iMessage,
you can create a reminder that will remind you when you open a message with a specific person,
which is obviously great if you know that you need to remind that specific person of something.
In the list itself, tapping the ellipsis icon up here in the top right will give
us a number of options, including the ability to choose how to sort the list,
the ability to save this list as a template, which can make creating
new lists quicker moving forward, and to print the list if paper is more your vibe.
**Smart Lists**
Back on the main page, let’s choose Add List. I’m going to call the list
Urgent and make it red, and then I’m going to choose Make into Smart List. Smart Lists
are basically filters that will not only apply to reminders you’ve already created,
but any moving forward. So for this one, I’m going to say that reminders need to match any of the
below criteria, rather than all. And in tags, I’m going to create a couple of relevant tags,
I’ll make one called finance and one called bills, and then I’m also going to go into
priority and say that anything marked as a high priority should go in this list as well.
And you can see that right away, my high priority reminder has gone into this smart list. Watch what
happens if I create a new reminder, which I’ll make sure has got the bills tag included as I’m
making it. You can see that, straight away, that item is added to my new urgent list.
Smart lists are really clever, and definitely worth taking a bit of time to play around with.
**Advanced Features**
That really is everything that you can now do in lists, but to finish up,
let me show you a few extras that are kind of outside of the Reminders app itself.
Here in Safari for example, if I choose Share, I can then choose Reminders from
the options below. I can choose where to put this reminder, and once created,
you can see that the reminder has a link to the page in Safari that I was on.
This also works, kind of, in Mail. You can see that in this email,
the person who has sent me it has included a date and a time in the email,
and if I tap on that, I can then create a reminder using that information.
Or, with the email open, I can access Siri and say
‘remind me about this tomorrow at 1pm’ for example, and Siri will create a reminder,
but more importantly that reminder has a link back to this email, which is obviously really handy.
Finally, on the Home Screen of my iPhone, if I tap and hold for a second to go into jiggle mode,
I can then add a reminders widget. I can choose from 3 different sizes, and once the widget has
been added, I can then tap and hold on the widget, to choose which list I’d like it to display.
Oh, and finally, if you use a Watch, Mac or iPad,
Reminders also works on all of those, and will sync across all your devices.
**End**
So there you go, that’s Reminders on iOS16. There are other reminders and to do list apps out there,
and I, like you, really wish that Apple would built an app that encompasses reminders and
your calendar together, but until they do that, the Reminders app is actually really quite good,
once you get properly into it. What do you think? Will you be using the
Reminders app a bit more now? Or have you got a reminders app that you use instead? If yes,
what is it? Drop me a comment and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.