Tech Tip — Better Together: Apple Reminders and Apple Calendar
I have covered calendar apps and specifically the Apple Reminders app previously. However, I have not covered Apple’s Calendar app paired with Apple Reminders, and that is where these two applications really begin to shine. Both applications received some updates last fall with iOS 18.0 and this has really allowed these two products to blend nicely together. In this Tech Tip, we’ll cover a few of those updates, then concentrate on how you can use these apps together to simplify and enhance your planning productivity.
A look at recent updates for Calendar
Apple has continued to improve their stock apps over time. I still think there are some fairly basic functions in the Calendar app I would like to see added (natural language entry), but it is a very functional calendar application. And, with its integrations with others (as we’ll discuss below), it makes it a compelling offering to any user. Additionally, as Siri and Apple Intelligence gets smarter, I expect that the Calendar app will do everything you need it to do. That said, here are some new enhancements that came last fall.
This was the big one and really the reason this article is necessary: the ability to see tasks from the Apple Reminder app directly in Calendar. Additionally, you can add new items to Reminders directly from Calendar. This gives you full functionality over any task you already have in the Reminders app, and you can make adjustments without flipping between the two apps. Very handy.
You also have a more detailed view of calendar items in the monthly view option. You can pinch in and out for more or less detail. By toggling between the view options, you can see as much or as little as you choose when viewing your calendar at the month level. The options are excellent. Not everyone selects to see their calendar the same way. This provides the options any user would want.
The iPhone also received some device-specific enhancements for viewing your day view. You can now select on the iPhone ‘multi-day’ as a view option. This allows you to see two days side by side and then quickly swipe through days. You can also hold your phone in the landscape orientation and it will display a week view. This only used to be available on the larger max iPhone versions. This is extremely helpful for planning or working with others to coordinate dates and times.
You can always leverage Siri to add events quickly to your calendar. This is not new, but something that I find I still underutilize. Another future advantage of using Apple’s Calendars app will be Apple Intelligence. As Siri gets smarter and can see your activities and factor that into its reasoning, having events in your calendar will allow Siri (Apple Intelligence) to help highlight conflicts or provide more intuitive reminders about events in the future.
A look at recent updates for Reminders
The biggest change for Apple Reminders last fall was its integration with Apple Calendar. This creates the possibility for these apps to be better together. We’ll cover the specifics of that below. But first, there were a few other small updates that can be useful when using Reminders.
If you utilize custom or the preset Smart Lists, enhancements were made to help view your tasks and sub-tasks better. 9to5Mac called out these useful changes:
Smart Lists in iOS 18 now finally support displaying subtasks. Previously, if you created subtasks, you couldn’t see them from directly inside a Smart List. In iOS 17, if you had a task inside your Today view that included three subtasks, you wouldn’t see those actual subtasks, only a line of text alerting you that it included subtasks. If you wanted more details, you would have to tap the Info button, then scroll down and tap subtasks. It was a pain. But if you viewed that same task inside its assigned list (a non-Smart List), you could view all subtasks at once within the list in an ordered hierarchy.
Another change to Smart Lists in iOS 18 is that you can change the order of the different sections of the Today list. By default, Today sorts reminders in this way:
Overdue reminders
All-day reminders
Timed reminders and these would be sorted by parts of the day (morning, afternoon, evening)
You now have significantly more control over how it is handling task hierarchy. It still maintains the ‘morning, afternoon, and evening’ sections (which is nice), but you can now choose how Reminders handles tasks within those sections, or any all-day tasks. You can sort by title, priority, due date, and more. This provides a lot of flexibility to set up your Today view the way you want it. I find that having these types of options can eliminate the arbitrary times you might assign to something, just to help with how you view it within a list. Now, priorities can mean what they mean, and you can reserve any specific times for when they are truly necessary.
Better together
The real benefit of these applications is using them together. That seems like it would be obvious since both are from Apple, however, until the latest improvements, I am not sure whether that was as clear as it should have been. For anyone who prefers to work seamlessly between their calendar and task manager, this now works exceptionally well. And, in reality, the real benefit here is actually being able to work more from your calendar (which many people like) with a task manager working behind the scenes. If you are in the habit of weekly planning, you could establish what you need to do for the week in Reminders on Sunday. Then you can assign the work to each day, with a designated time, and work from your the Calendar app the rest of the week.
From the Calendar application, you can now see full details of each reminder plotted on your calendar. Tapping (or clicking) on it gives you full visibility to every detail you entered into the Reminders app.
You can even establish new reminders directly from the Calendar app. This will provide the same view and interface you would have within the Reminders application itself. There is full integration.
When using the two together, you can drop events from the calendar into Reminders to create a seamless link between the two items. This allows full dual functionality between the two apps. When you have them linked, it won’t matter whether you are working in the Reminders app or the Calendars, app, you’ll have one-click access between them both. The below screenshots show the progression of this.
From the Calendar app, I can allocate time, then use that to create a task. I drop and drag into the Reminders app to create the task and assign the correct time.
In the Reminders app, I now have a link directly to that on the calendar shown by the icon next to the task name.
Finally, I can also see the time block, and the reminder on the calendar with full visibility to anything I included with the reminder, and I can check that off as complete when I am done. This is a great way to align your calendar with the work that needs to get done in that specified period of time.
Working with the updated Calendar and Reminders app now allows users to move seamlessly between the two and spend more time doing, rather than managing information across multiple applications. I have found this to be quite useful as I have been trying them out together.
Time blocking and task management
This is less about the changes to the application, and more about a practical approach to using these enhancements. With the Calendars app, you can have multiple calendars (for different purposes) and choose which you see and which you do not. This is perfect if you want to have a shared calendar with your partner, a family calendar, and a work calendar. You can toggle them on and off to see where conflicts or other events may come into play. This also allows you to create a template for time blocking. You can establish a calendar for your placeholders of work you want to do throughout your ‘ideal week’ and then have that as the basis for applying your reminders or tasks. Toggling the time block schedule on/off to keep your calendar clean and easy to manage, yet also check yourself on where your time is being spent.
This is another way you can utilize the Apple built-in applications together. You can even pair Apple Notes with Calendar and Reminder items to make a truly encapsulated system to manage task, time, and details. But we’ll leave the details of that for another day.
Wrap up
The Reminders and Calendar applications have been on Apple devices nearly since their inceptions. However, they are just now really coming into their own as apps that can be used by the masses and hold up to other, paid for apps from the App Store. Reminders is almost a fully loaded task management app now. It completes well against the likes of Todoist, OmniFocus, or Things. For most people, it is likely all you’ll need.
Calendars is also a solid application. For both Calendars and Reminders, I wish it had more natural langue capabilities, Todoist and FantastiCal still rule in this specific area. If you are used to Microsoft Outlook, there are still some oddities in accepting meeting invites from other people and the layout of information. For most, working within a corporate system tied to either a Microsoft Platform or Google Platform, you’re still probably better off using those native applications. You can always use Apple Calendars for quick glances (in most cases you can import a calendar, but that will depend on your company’s IT settings) for day to day review and your time blocking exercise.
Overall, using these two applications is a solid approach to improved productivity. I continue to explore how I can use them in my workflow and planning. I am excited (and hopeful) that there will be a few more enhancements coming this year, both with Apple Intelligence and this year’s iOS 19 update. Finally, I would love to leave the other apps behind and use what is built into Apples devices for my productivity workflows.
Are you using Apple Reminders and Calendar together? How have they helped you be more productive?
Get leadership tips and new articles you can use directly to your inbox. Join the thousands of other leaders continuing your leadership development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com.