Learn about the new redesigned Reminders app Apple introduced with macOS Catalina.
In this lesson for What’s New in macOS Catalina, I look at the new Reminders app. Apple redesigned the Reminders app, giving it a more flat design, as well as added new features. These new features include folder lists, where we can now group multiple lists into folders. Apple also added icons to lists, so we can easily identify a list by it’s icon, and we can add subtasks to reminders. If you want to learn more about what is new in the Reminders app with macOS Catalina, take a look at this video.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
In this video, we’re going to look at the all-new Reminders app with macOS Catalina. Apple completely redesigned the Reminders app. We still have a lot of the same features, including some new ones, but it’s just wrapped up in a new app. Let’s take a look at Reminders in macOS Catalina. Let’s go to my Mac. Let’s go and open up Reminders here. You’re going to see that the icon hasn’t changed too much, but when I click on this, you’re going to notice that the interface has changed. Over on the left, we have our sidebar. I like this look; it’s a flatter look. Over on the left, we have our sidebar. We have our search up at the top, and then we have these four categories here. If I wanted to see all of my reminders that are due today, I would click on Today. We can see we have one.
I click on it, and I can see what that reminder is. I want to see which reminders are scheduled. I go over to Scheduled here. I can see I have two of them. I click on it, and we can see we have two, one of them being today and another being this weekend, ‘Return my books to the library.’ If I want to add a new reminder, I click on the plus here. We also have All; this shows me all of my reminders. It is organized by list. Here are all my grocery reminders, and here are all my regular reminders, and then I do not have any reminders in Family, Shopping, or To Do. I want to see all of my reminders that are flagged. I click on this, and I can see all of my reminders that are flagged. I do not have any that are flagged. Below that, we have different lists. I want to see all of my groceries. All I have to do is click on Groceries here, and I can see all of my groceries. We have a couple of new options with our reminders lists. The first one is, we can add icons. You’re going to see we have an icon here.
If you look at these lists here, Family and Shopping, I have icons appropriate to that list. A family icon next to the Family reminder list and a shopping cart next to Shopping. Let’s go and add an icon and change the color for groceries. I control-click on the name, hold down the control key, and click, and you’re going to see Show Info. When I select this, what I can do is I can rename it, but in addition to that, I can go and change the icon. Let’s go ahead and click on this, and what I’m going to do is I’m going to select one of the icons here. We’re going to go with the grocery bag. I can also change the color. Let’s go green. Now, when I click on Okay, you’re going to see I have my icon, my grocery bag in a green circle. We can now add an icon to help us easily identify our different lists. What else is new? What we can group these into a folder. I have my Groceries here, and I have my Shopping.
What I would like to do is I would like to group these two items into a folder. Maybe I want to group these under Errands. To do that, all I have to do is drag one reminder’s list on the top of the other. Let’s go and drag Shopping here on top of Groceries. You’re going to see that Groceries turns blue. When I let go, it creates a new folder. Now, I’m going to rename this. I control-click on it, and we’re going to rename it. Let’s name this Errands. Now, I have my two reminders underneath Errands. Let’s take a look at reminders themselves. I have these two reminders here, ‘Call doctor’ and ‘Return books to library.’ To mark them as complete, I click on the circles here. If I want to get more information, maybe I want to change the date, I go over to the right, and you’re going to see a little ‘i.’ I click on it, and I can change the reminder date. I can change the location, what the priority is, add an image, and even add a note. This is also where I can go and flag it. In addition to that, I can also create sub-tasks. What are sub-tasks? Well, I have this ‘Return books to library.’
Let’s say I wanted to list the books that I need to return. The first thing I need to do is I need to create those reminders. Now, what I’m going to do is I’m just going to click outside here. I have the book ‘Angels and Demons,’ Dan Brown book. I finished reading it, and now I want to return it. I also have a Nelson DeMille book, ‘Night Fall.’ I type in here ‘Night Fall.’ Those are the two books that I need to return. What I want to do is I want to add these as sub-tasks. Then, they’re underneath ‘Return books to library.’ We have a few different ways of doing that. The easiest way that I find is to select them. I go outside of the name here, click on it to select it, turn gray, hold down the command key, choose this one, and turn gray. I have these two selected, and then all I have to do is go up under edit, and you’re going to see ‘Indent 2 Reminders’. When I choose this, it’s going to create a sub-task.
Let’s go ahead and select this to see what I mean. Now, we can see that they are listed underneath ‘Return books to the library.’ Now, we can quickly create sub-tasks with our reminders. When I complete them, let’s say I returned ‘Night Fall.’ I click on it, and it disappears. I want to see those completed reminders, all I need to do is pull down, and you’re going to see I have 20 completed. I go over to the right to show all of them, and now I can see all of my completed reminders. Maybe I didn’t return ‘Night Fall.’ I accidentally marked it. I click on it, and now I go and hide it. I hide my completed items, and we have ‘Night Fall’ back.
To add a list, you can click on Add List here. To add a reminder, you click on the plus here. That’s a look at the new Reminders app in macOS Catalina. We have a lot of the same features as we did with the older version. It’s just wrapped up in a new look, but we also do have some new features. We can now group our different lists into folders, and we can create sub-tasks for our reminders. We can also add icons to our reminders list to help us identify our lists.
That’s the new Reminders app in macOS Catalina.