Apple’s Reminders app is nice, however I’ve at all times needed so as to add its entries to my iPhone’s Calendar app, too. I’m at my best when I’ve a to-do listing with deadlines clearly listed, however I discover it overwhelming to have a look at that listing firstly of the day. I used to dread including too many entries to Reminders till I found ReminderCal ($5). This app does one job and does it effectively—sync reminders with the Calendar app.
Why I like seeing my duties in Calendar
The Calendar app has a neat week view that provides a little bit of area between each entry. If I’ve a run at 5am, meditation at 7, and work at 9:30, these entries appear overwhelming in Reminders. Within the Calendar, the identical three entries seem vertically with lengthy gaps in between, which tells me that I’ve a number of free time in between my duties. It is nearly like a trick that reduces the urgency of duties and makes my mind suppose: “I can do that!”
sync Reminders with Calendar
Credit score: Pranay Parab
When you obtain and set up ReminderCal in your iPhone, iPad, or Mac (a single buy unlocks the app on all three platforms), you will want to offer it entry to your calendars and to the Reminders app. From right here, the app will do its job with minimal enter.
Now, whenever you add timed reminders in Apple’s Reminders app, they’re going to begin showing within the Calendar routinely. If there are reminders that you do not wish to sync, you can begin these entries with $nocal or $nocalendar and ReminderCal will ignore them.
On Mac, so long as you let ReminderCal run within the background, it will routinely sync all of your duties. You needn’t maintain opening it and hitting the sync button.
On iPhone and iPad, background syncing is much less dependable as a consequence of battery saving measures within the working system. That is why I counsel utilizing Apple’s Shortcuts app to arrange an automation to power a sync at a set interval. Simply open the Shortcuts app, click on the “+” within the top-right nook, choose a time of day for the Shortcut to activate, inform the shortcut to activate day by day, and select the ReminderCal choice. In order for you ReminderCal to run a number of occasions a day, you will need to arrange a number of completely different automations to power it to run each few hours.
Personally, I prefer to plan my day upfront, so I’ve set ReminderCal as much as routinely sync at dawn. After I add duties for a similar day, I can at all times open ReminderCal on my iPhone and sync it manually. It takes a second for the entries to seem within the calendar.
Configuring ReminderCal to your liking
Credit score: Pranay Parab
I like ReminderCal’s simplicity, and that reveals in its settings menus as effectively. The default choices are nice for nearly everybody, however you’ll be able to change a number of issues in case you like. The app permits you to select if you need repeating reminders to seem in your calendars, for instance. It is enabled by default however you’ll be able to disable it if you wish to. You too can power the app to sync accomplished reminders that had been due prior to now, however that is disabled by default to keep away from cluttering your calendar.
There are two tweaks I counsel. I modified the default occasion period to 1 hour from half-hour. The second tweak permits you to invert the $nocal exception phrase. In case you allow it, ReminderCal will solely sync these reminder entries which have the $nocal phrase within the physique. This can be a good choice for many who wish to be very selective with syncing reminders with the calendar.
A limitation that you have to be conscious of
Sadly, third-party apps typically need to cope with restrictions. ReminderCal can not sync your reminders to calendars aside from Outlook and iCloud. That is going to be a dealbreaker for plenty of folks, particularly those that depend on Google Calendar, however there’s nothing the app’s developer can do about this as of but.