9 Best Uses for Apple Reminders Most People Miss

Hidden features in Apple Reminders that change everything

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Apple Reminders is a powerful tool. Yet, most people don’t know how to use it.

Mostly they use it for groceries and doctor appointments. For other things they use:

• Todoist

• Notion

• Things 3

• Wunderlist

But this tool can do much more than that. When I look at Apple Reminders discussion over the internet, users say it’s “Way better than I expected”.

Well, I can’t agree more.

The best ways to use Apple Reminders

Apple Reminders is my daily activity manager. Without it, I’m lost.

There I track weekly priorities, business tasks and personal appointments. In this story I’ll show you exactly how to use Apple Reminders.

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1. How to organize life with Apple Reminders

Reminders is where my day starts. I open it every morning. Reprioritize. Make a plan.

I built a system over time that covers everything — home, work, side hustle.

Here’s how it’s organized:

INBOX
Anything new goes here. Ideas. Tasks. Once a week, I clean it up and move things into proper lists.

FOLDERS
I have folders like “Private” for personal stuff and “Side Hustle” for my business. Each folder has multiple lists.
What I like about folders is when you click on them, you can see all reminders from each of the lists inside.

LISTS (time-based)
I keep 4 lists that are time-related. I update them often and use them to plan ahead. It’s how I keep things under control:

• ROUTINES: daily habits, challenges, learning

• MONTH TASKS: what I plan to do this month

• WEEK TASKS: what I want to do within the week. I update it around every weekend, usually on Friday or Sunday

• WEEK PRIORITY: 1–2 most important tasks

I organized my entire life with Apple Reminders

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2. Using Apple Reminders for business

I eventually moved all my business plans and improvements to Apple Reminders.

Other creators usually manage them through Notion or Excel. For me, Reminders is the right place.

I created a folder with lists (subcategories) from all areas of my business:

• ideas (usually from bookmarks),

• newsletter growth,

• products on Gumroad,

• Medium (improvements in writing),

• and general topics.

I review them all every month and decide what I want to do next.

Apple Reminders for business

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3. Apple Reminders for productivity

What’s the best way to set up Apple Reminders for maximum productivity.

To me it’s a single priorities list. I don’t use the built-in Today view in Reminders. It just shows everything due today, which can be chaos.

Instead, I built my own Today list.

How it works:

• Create a list called TODAY.

• Add two sections: Priority and Tasks.

• Each morning, I move items from Planner → Week → Today.

• Then I choose ONE task as my absolute priority. That’s the one I’ll feel good about finishing, even if nothing else gets done.

• The rest go into Tasks.

This keeps me from falling into the trap of “busy but not productive.” Every day, I start with the thing that matters most.

Apple Reminders for productivity

4. Apple Reminders for content creators

In Apple Reminders you can attach notes, URLs & files to individual reminders. I don’t love Safari’s built-in reading list. It’s a black hole.