Become a Reminders PRO with this iPhone Tutorial!

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 okay let's get into it 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 and 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 five 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 that 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 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 are a task you do still need to complete an action but their 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 okay with that clear let's create a basic reminder there are lots of ways that we can do this 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 chili 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 pop-up 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 add button up here in the top right to create a 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 color I'll make this gray because you 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 in 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 it 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 eight 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 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 the 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 realize 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 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 organize 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 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 three 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 tag 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 by the way if you're enjoying the content here why not consider signing up to my newsletter the proper weekly I include some tech news from the week a behind the scenes of what's Happening Here on the channel as well as a tip for an item in the Apple ecosystem the newsletter goes out each Friday it's free to join and I'll include a sign up link in the description of this video a new feature in iOS 16 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 and so 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 we'll filter to show you anything with an action date of today scheduled we'll 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 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 our 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 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 into 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 that really is everything that you can now do in reminders 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 it 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 reminder's widget I can choose from three different sizes and once 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 so there you go that's reminders on iOS 16. there are other reminders and to-do list apps out there and I like you really wish that Apple would build an app that encompasses reminders and your calendar together but until they do that the reminders app is actually really pretty 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

Channel: Proper Honest Tech

Views: 145,256

Keywords: iOS reminders, iPhone reminders, reminders for iphone, iPhone reminders tutorial, reminders for iPhone tutorial, how to use reminders on iphone

Id: ArpQoO1teGc

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022